RECONSTRUCTION OF THE STRUCTURE OF DISPERSIONS

To what extent can the structure of a disordered heterogeneous materia l be reconstructed using limited but essentially exact structural info rmation about the original system? We formulate a methodology based on simulated annealing to reconstruct both equilibrium and non-equilibri um dispersions of particles based only on correlation functions which statistically characterize the system. To test this method, we reconst ruct dispersions from the radial distribution function (RDF) associate d with the original system. Other statistical correlation functions ar e evaluated to compare how well the reconstructed system matches the o riginal system. We show that for low-density systems or high-density s ystems with little particle aggregation, our reconstruction from the R DF reproduces the system fairly well. However, for dense systems with extensive clustering, RDF information is somewhat inadequate in being able to reconstruct the original system. We also show that one can pro duce a system with an RDF that is similar to the reference system, but with appreciably different structure. Finally, system-size effects ar e analyzed analytically. (C) 1997 Academic Press.