Soft sphere potential

The soft sphere potential intermolecular pair potential is defined as

${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{12}(r)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}ϵ{(\frac{\sigma }{r})}^n& ;& r\le \sigma \\ 0& ;& r>\sigma \end{array}$

where ${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{12}(r)$ is the intermolecular pair potential between two soft spheres separated by a distance $r:=|{\mathbf{r}}_1-{\mathbf{r}}_2|$, $ϵ$is the interaction strength and $\sigma$ is the diameter of the sphere. Frequently the value of $n$ is taken to be 12, thus the model becomes the high temperature limit of the Lennard-Jones model

References

Releate reading

• William G. Hoover, Marvin Ross, Keith W. Johnson, Douglas Henderson, John A. Barker and Bryan C. Brown "Soft-Sphere Equation of State", Journal of Chemical Physics 52 pp. 4931-4941 (1970)