Physical Review Letters, 2 Oct. 1995, vol.75, (no.14):2694-7.

Self-consistent treatment of repulsive and attractive forces in nonuniform liquids.

Weeks, J.D.; Selinger, R.L.B.; Broughton, J.Q.

Abstract

Structural and thermodynamic properties of a nonuniform liquid are related to those of a reference fluid with purely repulsive intermolecular forces in an external field. A new equation for that field derived from the Yvon-Born-Green hierarchy permits a self-consistent description of correlations induced by the exact repulsive forces and a mean field treatment of the attractive forces. Predictions of the theory for drying effects at repulsive walls and for the liquid-vapor interface are compared to molecular dynamics simulations.
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