The structure of liquid bromine

Abstract

The atom-atom correlation function for liquid bromine, derived from the X-ray diffraction studies reported in the preceding paper, is compared with the results of Monte Carlo computer simulations and reference site interaction model (RISM) calculations for various bromine-like model molecules. The models used included the two-centre Lennard-Jones interaction model, both by itself and with idealized point quadrupole and quadrupole-induced dipole interaction terms in the computer simulations, and two and three-centre hard-sphere models in RISM. None of these models lead to atom-atom correlation functions which are in good agreement with that obtained from experiment. This suggests that additional information about the interactions between bromine molecules will be needed before the structure of liquid bromine can be completely understood. Finally, by comparing the results of our computer simulations with RISM results for analogous models, we obtain some insight into the accuracy of the reference site interaction model.