Approaching the Critical Point

• Critical phenomena are difficult to capture by molecular simulation

• Density fluctuations are related to compressibility

• Correlations between fluctuations important to behavior

  • in thermodynamic limit correlations have infinite range
  • in simulation correlations limited by system size
  • surface tension vanishes

Pressure

Density

L+V

V

L

S

S+V

L+S

C

isotherm

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