Abstract
The present study was motivated by the work of Fortov et al. (2008) on the use of experimental methods of analysis of spatial correlation of dust particles in plasma. Here, we therefore focus on the importance of the three-particle correlation function g 3 in the theory of monatomic classical liquids like argon, in the framework of two-body central forces. We cover (i) the asymptotic relation of g 3 to the Ornstein–Zernike direct correlation function c(r); (ii) the use of g 3 to determine the specific heat difference c P − c V ; and (iii) g 3 related to the pressure dependence of the pair correlation function.
Acknowledgements
N.H. March wishes to thank Professor V.E. Fortov for giving him a preview of the results of Citation1 during a Conference at the Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste, Italy. The authors wish to acknowledge that this Letter was completed during a stay at the Department of Physics, University of Antwerp (UA), Belgium. Thanks are due to Professors C. Van Alsenoy and D. Lamoen for their warm hospitality. N.H. March was partially supported by UA through the BOF-NOI.