Book Description

The objective of this report is to construct isotherms of sodium by calculating the isothermal compressibility. A simple form for the electron-ion pseudopotential allows the effective ion-ion interaction to be readily determined. In the case of liquid sodium, this dtermination is used in turn to construct a hard sphere model for the structure factor. A model of liquid sodium which disregards certain electron-electron effects is then examined to see where those effects become important. Finally, a simple calculation for the compressibility with those effects included is used to generate isotherms for solid and liquid sodium. The isotherms seem to agree reasonably well in the pressure region where experimental data are available.