Phase diagram of the hard-sphere/attractive-Yukawa system

Abstract

A density functional approximation is used to study the phase diagram of a hard sphere-attractive Yukawa system. We pay special attention to the dependence of the liquid phase stability on the range of the attractive tail. When this is sufficiently short-ranged, the liquid phase is not present in the phase diagram. The transition to the usual behavior with a phase diagram showing vapor, liquid, and solid phases takes place for a value of the range of the attractive part which is in reasonable agreement with recent Monte Carlo simulations and theoretical results.