Isomorphs in the phase diagram of a model liquid without inverse power law repulsion

Abstract: It is demonstrated by molecular dynamics simulations that liquids interacting via the Buckingham potential are strongly correlating, i.e., have regions of their phase diagram where constant-volume equilibrium fluctuations in the virial and potential energy are strongly correlated. A binary Buckingham liquid is cooled to a viscous phase and shown to have isomorphs, which are curves in the phase diagram along which structure and dynamics in appropriate units are invariant to a good approximation. To test this, the radial distribution function, and both the incoherent and coherent intermediate scattering function are calculated. The results are shown to reflect a hidden scale invariance; despite its exponential repulsion the Buckingham potential is well approximated by an inverse power-law plus a linear term in the region of the first peak of the radial distribution function. As a consequence the dynamics of the viscous Buckingham liquid is mimicked by a corresponding model with purely repulsive inverse-power-law interactions. The results presented here closely resemble earlier results for Lennard-Jones type liquids, demonstrating that the existence of strong correlations and isomorphs does not depend critically on the mathematical form of the repulsion being an inverse power law.