The effects of three-body dispersion interactions on liquid-liquid phase equilibrium

Abstract

Using perturbation theory, we show that three-body dispersion interactions influence the phase diagrams of partially miscible liquid mixtures. In our model mixtures, the argon-like particles interact through Maitland-Smith pair potentials and Axilrod-Teller three-body potentials. We find that ternary liquid-liquid coexistence curves are sensitive to v_ABC , the strength of the Axilrod-Teller interaction appearing for the first time in the ternary mixture. Effective pair potentials predict the ternary phase diagrams well if v_ABC satisfies Tang's rule.