Fundamental measure theory for predicting many-body correlation functions

Abstract: We study many-body correlation functions within various Fundamental Measure Theory (FMT) formulations and compare their predictions to Monte Carlo simulations of hard-sphere fluids. FMT accurately captures key features of three- and four-body structure, particularly at low and intermediate wavevectors. We show that the dominant contributions to the four-point structure factor arise from direct triplet correlations, allowing evaluation of four-point correlations to be greatly simplified. In glass-forming liquids at high volume fractions, FMT correctly reproduces deviations from the convolution approximation, highlighting FMT's ability to capture growing structural multipoint correlations upon supercooling.