On the accuracy of the melting curves drawn from modelling a solid as an elastic medium

Abstract

An ongoing problem in the study of a classical many-body system is the characterization of its equilibrium behaviour by theory or numerical simulation. For purely repulsive particles, locating the melting line in the pressure-temperature plane can be especially hard if the interparticle potential has a softened core or contains some adjustable parameters. A method is hereby presented that yields reliable melting-curve topologies with negligible computational effort. It is obtained by combining the Lindemann melting criterion with a description of the solid phase as an elastic continuum. A number of examples are given in order to illustrate the scope of the method and possible shortcomings. For a two-body repulsion of Gaussian shape, the outcome of the present approach compares favourably with the more accurate but also more computationally demanding self-consistent harmonic approximation.

25 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Anomalous phase behavior of a soft-repulsive potential with a strictly monotonic force
• The zero-temperature phase diagram of soft-repulsive particle fluids
• Negative Poisson's ratio materials via isotropic interactions
• Anomalous melting behavior under extreme conditions: hard matter turning "soft"

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Hexatic phase and water-like anomalies in a two-dimensional fluid of particles with a weakly softened core
• Hexatic phase and cluster crystals of two-dimensional GEM4 spheres
• Cluster phases of penetrable rods on a line
• Twofold reentrant melting in a double-Gaussian fluid
• Phase behavior of a double-Gaussian fluid displaying water-like features
• Melting of the two-dimensional solid phase in the Gaussian-core model