Liquid structure of the alkaline-earth metals

We present ab initio calculations of the liquid structure of the alkaline-earth metals. Our approach is based on the neutral-pseudoatom method to obtain the interionic pair potential and on the variational-modified-hypernetted-chain integral-equation theory of liquids [Y. Rosenfeld, J. Stat. Phys. 42, 437 (1986)] to obtain the liquid structure. This combination results in a whole theory that is free of adjustable parameters. We find that our pair potentials follow the expected trends for these metals. The predicted static structure factors are in good agreement with the available experimental data [Y. Waseda, The Structure of Non-Crystalline Materials (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980)].