Isomorph invariance and thermodynamics of repulsive dense bi-Yukawa one-component plasmas

Abstract

In numerous realizations of complex plasmas, dust-dust interactions are characterized by two screening lengths and are thus better described by a combination of Yukawa potentials. The present work investigates the static correlations and the thermodynamics of repulsive dense bi-Yukawa fluids based on the fact that such strongly coupled systems exhibit isomorph invariance. The strong virial-potential energy correlations are demonstrated with the aid of molecular dynamics simulations, an accurate analytical expression for the isomorph family of curves is obtained and an empirical expression for the fluid-solid phase-coexistence line is proposed. The isomorph-based empirically modified hypernetted-chain approach, grounded on the ansatz of isomorph invariant bridge functions, is then extended to such systems and the resulting structural properties show an excellent agreement with the results of computer simulations. A simple and accurate closed-form expression is obtained for the excess internal energy of dense bi-Yukawa fluids by capitalizing on the compact parameterization offered by the Rosenfeld-Tarazona decomposition in combination with the Rosenfeld scaling, which opens up the energy route to thermodynamics.