Renormalization group theory for fluids

Abstract

Some extensions of renormalization group methods to fluids are discussed that may facilitate the development of a general renormalization group theory for real fluids that is capable of predicting their thermodynamic properties globally, including both at the critical point and away from the critical point, from a specification solely of the microscopic interactions among the constituent molecules. The extensions include application to virial series and free energies for freely moving molecules (as contrasted with Hamiltonian methods used for fixed lattices of molecules); inclusion of contributions from fluctuations of very short wavelengths, comparable to the range of the attractive forces; and evaluation of the scale factor for fluctuation amplitudes. An approximate theory incorporating these new features is formulated and illustrated in a simple application to the thermal behavior of n-pentane in a large extended neighborhood of its critical point.