English

Asymptotic methods for confined fluids

Soft Condensed Matter 2025-03-13 v2

Abstract

The thermodynamics and microstructure of confined fluids with small particle number are best described using the canonical ensemble. However, practical calculations can usually only be performed in the grand-canonical ensemble, which can introduce unphysical artifacts. We employ the method of asymptotics to transform grand-canonical observables to the canonical ensemble, where the former can be conveniently obtained using the classical density functional theory of inhomogeneous fluids. By formulating the ensemble transformation as a contour integral in the complex fugacity plane we reveal the influence of the Yang-Lee zeros in determining the form and convergence properties of the asymptotic series. The theory is employed to develop expansions for the canonical partition function and the canonical one-body density. Numerical investigations are then performed using an exactly soluble one-dimensional model system of hard-rods.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.05027,
  title  = {Asymptotic methods for confined fluids},
  author = {Emmanuel di Bernardo and Joseph Brader},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.05027},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:25:36.796Z