Comment on the thermodynamics of a classical one-component plasma

Abstract

A variational method used recently in the theory of liquid metals and screened Coulomb systems is extended to treat the thermodynamic properties of a classical, uniform, one-component plasma. The Helmholtz free energy and corresponding thermodynamic derivatives can all be expressed in concise parametric form as functions of an equivalent hard-sphere packing function. The results are generally found to agree well with recent Monte Carlo calculations, especially at temperatures close to the observed crystallization temperature.