Mayer f function - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

The Mayer f-function is an auxiliary function that often appears in the series expansion of thermodynamic quantities related to classical many-particle systems.

Definition

Consider a system of classical particles interacting through a pair-wise potential

V ( i , j )

where the bold labels i and j denote the continuous degrees of freedom associated with the particles, e.g.,

i = r i

for spherically symmetric particles and

i = ( r i , Ω i )

for rigid non-spherical particles where r denotes position and Ω the orientation parametrized e.g. by Euler angles. The Mayer f-function is then defined as

f ( i , j ) = e − β V ( i , j ) − 1

where β = ( k B T ) − 1 the inverse absolute temperature in units of (Temperature times the Boltzmann constant k B )⁻¹ .

References

Mayer f-function Wikipedia

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