Interionic potentials, pseudopotentials, and the structure factor of liquid lead

Abstract

We study the experimental structure factor of liquid Pb using the modified hypernetted-chain equation. The dependence of the pair potential on the structural environment is related to the electron effective mass which changes discontinuously at the melting point while the pseudopotential remains invariant. A solid-phase pair potential derived from liquid-phase results gives good elastic constants, phonon data, and the low-temperature electronic specific heat, although based only on a local two-parameter pseudopotential.