Structure of expanded liquid rubidium by neutron diffraction

The static structure factor, S(Q), of liquid rubidium has been studied by neutron diffraction for temperature up to 2000 K and pressures up to 139 bar near saturation conditions, corresponding to an expansion of the liquid from 1.46 to 0.54 gcm-3. The characteristic changes of the scattering behaviour and of the microscopic structure approaching the M-NM transition region are discussed. A comparison of these results with simple hard sphere model calculations is given