EQUATION OF STATE AND CORRELATION-FUNCTIONS OF STRONGLY COUPLED PLASMA MIXTURES - DENSITY-FUNCTIONAL THEORY AND ANALYTIC MODELS

A recent free-energy model for charged-Yukawa mixtures, based on an ex tension of the Coulomb ''linear-mixing rule'' to Yukawa charges, enabl es us to obtain a very accurate equation of state of bulk dense-plasma mixtures. A self-consistent density functional theory for pair correl ations predicts the energy to better than a few parts in 10(4) when co mpared with the best available simulations for both Yukawa and Coulomb plasmas. The simulations results for the tiny deviations from ''linea r mixing'' are accurately represented by the hypernetted-chain approxi mation, as well as by an analytic variational hard-sphere model (which , ironically, both provide only two figures of accuracy for the potent ial energy). The self-consistent density functional theory provides th e most accurate presently available ''first principles'' description f or the structure and equation of state of the bulk Coulomb and Yukawa mixtures, and can be applied also to inhomogeneous plasmas.