Elastic properties of dense hard-sphere fluids

Abstract

A new analysis of elastic properties of dense hard-sphere (HS) fluids is presented, based on the expressions derived by Miller [J. Chem. Phys. 50, 2733 (1969)]. Important consequences for HS fluids in terms of sound waves propagation, Poisson’s ratio, Stokes-Einstein relation, and generalized Cauchy identity are explored. Conventional expressions for high-frequency elastic moduli for simple systems with continuous and differentiable interatomic interaction potentials are known to diverge when approaching the HS repulsive limit. The origin of this divergence is identified here. It is demonstrated that these conventional expressions are only applicable for sufficiently soft interactions and should not be applied to HS systems. The reported results can be of interest in the context of statistical physics, physics of fluids, soft condensed matter, and granular materials.