Density-functional theory of correlations in dense plasmas: Improvement on the hypernetted-chain scheme

Multiparticle correlations in dense plasmas are analyzed in terms of the density-functional formalism; theoretical schemes of improvement over the hypernetted-chain (HNC) approximation are thereby advanced. The proposed schemes contain no adjustable parameters; the computational difficulties associated with these schemes are no greater than those involved in the solution of the ordinary HNC equations. The validity and accuracy of those improved HNC schemes are examined through numerical comparison with the exact Monte Carlo (MC) simulation data; significant improvement over the HNC scheme and close agreement with the MC results are thereby demonstrated