The properties of liquid nitrogen

Abstract

A computer simulation for a homonuclear diatomic molecular liquid by ‘molecular dynamics’ has been carried out using an ‘atom-atom’ intermolecular potential for five densities and a range of temperatures, corresponding to liquid nitrogen from the triple point to the critical point. Excellent agreement with experiment is found for the thermodynamic properties, for the structure factor and for self-diffusion. The more subtle properties such as orientational correlation functions are less well reproduced and show that the ‘atom-atom’ potential is probably a better representation of the true intermolecular potential for nitrogen at short than at long distances. The orientational distribution functions are investigated in some detail and will be useful for comparison with analytical results.