Intrinsic Structure of the Critical Liquid-Gas Interface

Abstract

A new theory is presented to determine the structure of the intrinsic density profile of the liquid-gas interface near the critical point. A nonlinear integral equation for this profile is derived and it is shown that a nontrivial solution branches off at the critical temperature. The scaling form and the asymptotic behavior of this solution are derived exactly: The wings of the intrinsic density profile decay exponentially with an exponent proportional to the inverse correlation length, confirming the conjectures of Widom.