Differences between discontinuous and continuous soft-core attractive potentials the appear.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 7 0 3 6 8 1 v 2 [ c o n d - m a t .s t a t - m e c h ] 1 7 A p r 2 0 0 7 Differences between discontinuous and continuous soft-core attractive potentials: the appearance of density anomaly Giancarlo Franzese Departament de Fisica Fonamental, Facultat de Fisica, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 647, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.? Abstract Soft-core attractive potentials can give rise to a phase diagram with three fluid phases at different densities (gas, low-density liquid and high-density liquid), separated by first order phase transition lines ending in critical points. Experiments show a phase diagram with these features for phosphorous and triphenyl-phosphite. Liquid-liquid phase transition could be relevant for water, silica, liquid metals, colloids and protein solutions, among others. Here we compare two potentials with short-range soft-core repulsion and narrow attraction. One of them is a squared potential that is known to have liquid-liquid phase transition, ending in a critical point, and no anomaly in density. The normal, monotonic, behavior of density for isobaric cooling is surprising if compared with molecular liquids, such as water, where a hypothetical critical point is proposed as rationale for the anomalous behavior of density. The second potential is a continuous version of the first. We show that the phase diagram associated to this new potential has, not only the liquid-liquid phase transition, but also the density anomaly. Our result, therefore, shows that the behavior in density is strongly dependent on the derivative of the potential. Keywords: Liquid-liquid phase transition. Density anomaly. Isotropic potential. ?Electronic address: gfranzese@ub.edu 1 I. INTRODUCTION Increasing experimental, theoretical and numerical evidences are showing that single- component systems can have more than the two commonly known fluid phases: gas and liquid. There is no thermodynamic inconsistency, indeed, in hypnotizing the