Self-consistent field theory of density correlations in classical fluids

Abstract

More than half of a century has passed since the free energy of classical fluids defined by second Legendre transform was derived as a functional of density-density correlation function. It is now becoming an increasingly significant issue to develop the correlation functional theory that encompasses the liquid state theory, especially for glassy systems where out of equilibrium correlation fields are to be investigated. Here we have formulated a field theoretic perturbation theory that incorporates two-body fields (both of density-density correlation field and its dual field playing the role of two-body interaction potential) into a density functional integral representation of the Helmholtz free energy. Quadratic density fluctuations are only considered in the saddle-point approximation of two-body fields as well as density field. We have obtained a set of self-consistent field equations with respect to these fields, which simply reads a modified mean-field equation of density field where the bare interaction potential in the thermal energy unit is replaced by minus the direct correlation function given in the mean spherical approximation. Such replacement of the interaction potential in the mean-field equation belongs to the same category as the local molecular field theory proposed by Weeks and co-workers. Notably, it has been shown that even the mean-field part of the free energy functional given by the self-consistent field theory includes information on short-range correlations between fluid particles, similarly to the formulation of the local molecular field theory. The advantage of our field theoretic approach is not only that the modified mean-field equation can be improved systematically, but also that fluctuations of two-body fields in nonuniform fluids may be considered, which would be relevant especially for glass-forming liquids.