Transferable pair potentials for the description of liquid alkali metals

The structural and thermodynamic properties of Liquid alkali metals near the melting point are presented. For this purpose, we use the thermodynamically self-consistent integral equation of the Liquid state theory, called the hybridized mean-spherical approximation (HMSA). The effective interionic potential is derived via the second-order pseudopotential-perturbation method, in which the very recent pseudopotential of Fiolhais et al. [Phys. Rev. B 51, 14001 (1995)], designed for the solid state, is combined with our semianalytical local-field function [J. L. Bretonnet and M. Boulahbak, Phys. Rev. B 53, 6859 (1996)]. We show that this pseudopotential is transferable to the disordered environment characteristic of the liquid state and, if used with our local-field function, predicts the structural and thermodynamic properties of the liquid alkali metals with a reasonable accuracy. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.