Theory Of Liquids And Other Disordered Media

Theory of Liquids and Other Disordered Media

Theory of Liquids

Of the three basic states of matter, liquid is perhaps the most complex. While its flow properties are described by fluid mechanics, its thermodynamic properties are often neglected, and for many years it was widely believed that a general theory of liquid thermodynamics was unattainable. In recent decades that view has been challenged, as new advances have finally enabled us to understand and describe the thermodynamic properties of liquids. This book explains the recent developments in theory, experiment and modelling that have enabled us to understand the behaviour of excitations in liquids and the impact of this behaviour on heat capacity and other basic properties. Presented in plain language with a focus on real liquids and their experimental properties, this book is a useful reference text for researchers and graduate students in condensed matter physics and chemistry as well as for advanced courses covering the theory of liquids.

A Concise Course on the Theory of Classical Liquids

This short primer offers non-specialist readers a concise, yet comprehensive introduction to the field of classical fluids – providing both fundamental information and a number of selected topics to bridge the gap between the basics and ongoing research. In particular, hard-sphere systems represent a favorite playground in statistical mechanics, both in and out of equilibrium, as they represent the simplest models of many-body systems of interacting particles, and at higher temperature and densities they have proven to be very useful as reference systems for real fluids. Moreover, their usefulness in the realm of soft condensed matter has become increasingly recognized – for instance, the effective interaction among (sterically stabilized) colloidal particles can be tuned to almost perfectly match the hard-sphere model. These lecture notes present a brief, self-contained overview of equilibrium statistical mechanics of classical fluids, with special applications to both the structural and thermodynamic properties of systems made of particles interacting via the hard-sphere potential or closely related model potentials. In particular it addresses the exact statistical-mechanical properties of one-dimensional systems, the issue of thermodynamic (in)consistency among different routes in the context of several approximate theories, and the construction of analytical or semi-analytical approximations for the structural properties. Written pedagogically at the graduate level, with many figures, tables, photographs, and guided end-of-chapter exercises, this introductory text benefits students and newcomers to the field alike.