Single-Particle Scattering Approximation for the Pair Function of an Electron Liquid

Abstract

The static pair correlation function of the three-dimensional homogeneous electron gas at given temperature and density is estimated by the scattering of non-interacting particles in an effective potential. Within a generalized Thomas–Fermi approximation the resulting self-consistency conditions can be reduced to a simple linear differential equation. The influence of temperature and interaction on the short-range correlations is investigated extensively. The comparison with ground-state Monte-Carlo calculations shows an excellent conformity at metallic densities.

Key Words:

• Jellium
• nonzero temperature
• pair function
• effective interaction