Statistical Mechanics of Reacting Coulomb Gases
- 1 August 1973
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review A
- Vol. 8 (2), 1061-1076
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.8.1061
Abstract
A quantum-statistical-mechanical formulation is developed for determining the equation of state of Coulomb gases. The procedure is to develop the activity expansion of the grand partition function into a true perturbation expansion in which the divergences present in the cluster expansion of the Coulomb gas have been eliminated. Ionization and dissociation appear quite naturally in this approach even though only the total number of nuclei and electrons in the system are specified. Considerable insight into the quantum-mechanical perturbation result is obtained from the classical perturbation theory. The form of the static screened Coulomb potential that replaces the classical Debye-Hückel potential is discussed. An application to the equation of state of gaseous hydrogen which takes account of all , , and interactions is given. The formation of higher clusters such as , , H-H, etc., can also be systematically included. Owing to the extensive numerical calculations required, this has currently only been done in an approximate way. It is shown that the simple one-level Saha equation, including Debye-Hückel corrections for the free charges, is fairly accurate for g/. At greater densities the differences become significant.
Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Equilibrium Properties and Equation of State of a Hydrogen PlasmaPhysical Review B, 1964
- Thermodynamic functions of a partially degenerate, fully ionized gasJournal of Nuclear Energy. Part C, Plasma Physics, Accelerators, Thermonuclear Research, 1961
- Thermodynamic Excess Functions for Electrolyte SolutionsThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1960
- Mayer's Ionic Solution Theory Applied to Electrolyte MixturesThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1960
- Giant Cluster Expansion Theory and Its Application to High Temperature PlasmaProgress of Theoretical Physics, 1959
- On Mayer's ionic solution theoryMolecular Physics, 1959
- Theory of Potentials of Average Force and Radial Distribution Functions in Ionic SolutionsThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1958
- Quantum Statistics of Interacting Particles; General Theory and Some Remarks on Properties of an Electron GasPhysics of Fluids, 1958
- Mayer's Treatment of Ionic SolutionsThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1957
- The Theory of Ionic SolutionsThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1950