Criterion for determining clustering versus reentrant melting behavior forbounded interaction potentials - art. no. 031206

We examine in full generality the phase behavior of systems whose constitue nt particles interact by means of potentials that do not diverge at the ori gin, are free of attractive parts, and decay fast enough to zero as the int erparticle separation r goes to infinity. By employing a mean field-density functional theory which is shown to become exact at high temperatures and/ or densities, we establish a criterion that determines whether a given syst em will freeze at all temperatures or it will display reentrant melting and an upper freezing temperature.