Semiphenomenological model for gas-liquid phase transitions

• Autor(a) principal: Benilov, E. S.
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Benilov, M. S.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/4558
• topic: Gas-liquid phase transitions; Semiphenomenological model; .; Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia

We examine a rarefied gas with inter-molecular attraction. It is argued that the attraction force amplifies random density fluctuations by pulling molecules from lower-density regions into high-density regions and thus may give rise to an instability. To describe this effect, we use a kinetic equation where the attraction force is taken into account in a way similar to how electromagnetic forces in plasma are treated in the Vlasov model. It is demonstrated that the instability occurs when the temperature T is lower than a certain threshold value Ts depending on the gas density. It is further shown that, even if T is only marginally lower than Ts, the instability generates clusters with density much higher than that of the gas. These results suggest that the instability should be interpreted as a gas-liquid phase transition, with Ts being the temperature of saturated vapor and the high-density clusters representing liquid droplets.