New developments in classical density functional theory

By Jade Holt on August 12, 2016

Equilibrium density profiles as obtained from DDFT calculations without driving force.

Electronic density functional theory (DFT) will be well known to anyone working in condensed matter physics, especially those trying to predict complex behavior at the atomic scale. However fewer will be familiar with classical DFT. Our Guest Editors, Robert Evans, Martin Oettel, Roland Roth and Gerhard Kahl explain:

Classical DFT [is] a formalism designed to tackle the statistical mechanics of inhomogeneous fluids. Whereas in electronic DFT the fundamental variable is the electron density in classical DFT this is the average one-body ‘particle’ density where the particles refer to atoms or ions, tackled at the Angstrom scale, or to colloidal particles, tackled at the micron length scale. Classical DFT has also been developed for polymeric systems and for liquid crystals.

The special issue ‘New developments in classical density functional theory‘ covers developments in two main areas, developing a new approach or a new functional, or applying current methods to a new problem. In some papers, there are even aspects of both showing that there are plenty of developments happening in this classical field.

You can read the full special issue here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Image taken from Urs Zimmermann et al 2016 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 28 244019. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Extract taken from Robert Evans et al 2016 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 28 240401. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.