Pair distribution function

The pair distribution function describes the distribution of distances between pairs of particles contained within a given volume. Mathematically, if a and b are two particles, the pair distribution function of b with respect to a, denoted by g_{ab}(\vec{r}) is the probability of finding the particle b at distance \vec{r} from a, with a taken as the origin of coordinates.

The pair distribution function describes the distribution of distances between pairs of particles contained within a given volume. Mathematically, if a and b are two particles, the pair distribution function of b with respect to a, denoted by g_{ab}(\vec{r}) is the probability of finding the particle b at distance \vec{r} from a, with a taken as the origin of coordinates. p(\vec{r})=1/V , where V is the volume of the container. On the other hand, the likelihood of finding pairs of objects at given positions (i.e. the two-body probability density) is not uniform. For example, pairs of hard balls must be separated by at least the diameter of a ball. The pair distribution function g(\vec{r},\vec{r}') is obtained by scaling the two-body probability density function by the total number of objects N and the size of the container: g(\vec{r}, \vec{r}') = p(\vec{r},\vec{r}') V^2 \frac{N-1}{N} . In the common case where the number of objects in the container is large, this simplifies to give: g(\vec{r}, \vec{r}') \approx p(\vec{r},\vec{r}') V^2 . g(\vec{r})=1 , where \vec{r} is the separation between a pair of objects. However, this is inaccurate in the case of hard objects as discussed above, because it does not account for the minimum separation required between objects. The hole-correction (HC) approximation provides a better model: g(r) = \begin{cases} 0,&r where b is the diameter of one of the objects. Although the HC approximation gives a reasonable description of sparsely packed objects, it breaks down for dense packing. This may be illustrated by considering a box completely filled by identical hard balls so that each ball touches its neighbours. In this case, every pair of balls in the box is separated by a distance of exactly r=nb where n is a positive whole number. The pair distribution for a volume completely filled by hard spheres is therefore a set of Dirac delta functions of the form: g(r)=\sum\limits_i\delta(r-ib) . Finally, it may be noted that a pair of objects which are separated by a large distance have no influence on each other's position (provided that the container is not completely filled). Therefore, \lim\limits_{r\to\infty}g(r) = 1 . In general, a pair distribution function will take a form somewhere between the sparsely packed (HC approximation) and the densely packed (delta function) models, depending on the packing density f . g_{ab}(r) = \frac{1}{N_{a} N_b}\sum\limits_{i=1}^{N_a} \sum\limits_{j=1}^{N_b} \langle \delta( \vert \mathbf{r}_{ij} \vert -r)\rangle

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