Dynamical structure of fluid mercury: molecular-dynamics simulations

We have carried out molecular-dynamics simulations for nonmetallic fluid mercury in liquid and vapour phases using a Lennard-Jones type effective potential and shown that the structure factors S(Q) and the dynamic structure factors S(Q,ω ) of nonmetallic fluid mercury obtained by our MD simulations are in good agreement with recent x-ray diffraction and inelastic x-ray scattering experiments. We conclude from these results that, though the fluid mercury which shows a metal-nonmetal transition is a ‘complex’ fluid, the nonmetallic fluid mercury is a relatively ‘simple’ liquid, which can be well described by the single density-independent Lennard-Jones type potential. PACS: 61.20Ja, 61.20Lc *Corresponding author. Tel.:+81-82-424-6544; fax: +81-82-424-0757 E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Hoshino)