Analytic expressions for correlations in coarse-grained simple fluids

Abstract

Coarse-graining of fluids is challenging because fluid particles are unbound and diffuse long distances in time. One approach creates coarse-grain variables that group all particles within a region centered on specific points in space and accounts for the movement of particles among such regions. In our previous work, we showed that in many cases, potential interactions for such a scheme adopted a generalized quadratic form, whose parameters depend on means, variances, and correlation coefficients among the coarse-grain variables. In this work, we use statistical mechanics to derive analytic expressions for these parameters, using properties of the fluid, including pair distribution functions. These expressions are compared against simulation-derived values and shown to be in good agreement. This approach can be used to calculate a priori the potential for any homogeneous, simple fluid, without the need for fitting procedures or matching, thus increasing the ease of use of this coarse-grain scheme and creating a foundation for large-scale bottom-up simulations. Furthermore, these expressions provide a quantitative way of studying the boundary between discrete (atomic) and continuum models of fluids.