THE STRUCTURE AND ELECTRONIC DENSITY DISTRIBUTION IN THE LIQUID ALKALI-METALS

We present ab initio calculations for the electronic density distribut ion, and electron-ion and ion-ion correlation functions for the liquid alkali metals at conditions near the melting point. Our calculations are based on the use of the neutral pseudoatom method to derive the in terionic, pair potential and on the variational modified hypernetted c hain integral equation theory of liquids. The resulting theory is free of adjustable parameters, using the atomic numbers as the only input data. The interionic pair potentials obtained follow the expected tren ds, whereas the theoretical structural functions show a good agreement with experiment.