Atomic motions in liquid sodium

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations on a liquid sodium system are compared with experimental results from inelastic neutron scattering for 0.69<Q<1.80 AA-1 and 0<E<(13-18) meV, The overall agreement between the scattering functions obtained is vary satisfactory. However, small discrepancies of a systematic nature are seen. The difficulty in extracting the frequency distribution of the velocity autocorrelation function from measured data is discussed in detail.