Correlations in a partially degenerate electron plasma

The density-functional theory proves that an ion-electron mixture can be treated as a one-component liquid interacting only via a pairwise interaction in the evaluation of the ion-ion radial distribution function (RDF), and provides a set of integral equations: one is an integral equation for the ion-ion RDF and another for an effective ion-ion interaction, which depends on the ion-ion RDF. This formulation gives a set of integral equation to calculate plasma structures with combined use of the electron-electron correlations in a partially degenerate electron plasma. Therefore, it is important for this purpose to determine the electron-electron correlations at a arbitrary temperature. Here, they are calculated by the quantal version of the hypernetted chain (HNC) equation. On the basis of the jellium-vacancy model, the ionic and electronic structures of rubidium are calculated for the range from liquid metal to plasma states by increasing the temperature at the fixed density using the electron-correlation results. (author)