Modified Meister-Kroll density functional applied to the structure of an inhomogeneous hard sphere fluid

Abstract

An alternative choice for the coarse-grained density to be used in the density functional introduced by Meister and Kroll is proposed and the resulting functional is used in the determination of the structure of a hard-sphere fluid near a hard wall. The coarse-grained density ρ _a (r) is chosen as the long wavelength component of the actual density ρ(r). This ensures that ρ _a (r) is slowly varying compared with ρ(r). When compared with the density profile obtained by computer simulation, the results are comparable with those obtained by Groot and van der Eerden. Both methods ensure that the density functional leads to the correct direct correlation function of the homogeneous fluid.