Nonlocal integral-equation approximations. I. The zeroth order (hydrostatic) approximation with applications

Abstract

A formally exact nonlocal density-functional expansion procedure for direct correlation functions developed earlier by Stell for a homogeneous system, and extended by Blum and Stell, Sullivan and Stell, and ourselves to various inhomogeneous systems, is used here to derive nonlocal integral-equation approximations. Two of the simplest of these approximations (zeroth order), which we shall characterize here as the hydrostatic Percus–Yevick (HPY) approximation and the hydrostatic hypernetted-chain (HHNC) approximation, respectively, are shown to be capable of accounting for wetting transitions on the basis of general theoretical considerations. Before turning to such transitions, we investigate in this first paper of a series the case of homogeneous hard-sphere fluids and hard spheres near a hard wall as well as the case of hard spheres inside a slit pore. Numerical results show that the HHNC approximation is better than the HNC approximation for both the homogeneous and inhomogeneous systems considered here while the HPY approximation appears to overcorrect the PY approximation.