Effective pair potentials in liquid metals

Several theoretical, phenomenological and numerical methods that have been applied to extract effective pair potentials in liquid metals are discussed. The potentials for liquid lead obtained by different methods are analyzed in terms of their reliability and their sensitivity with respect to the technique applied and to available experimental data. Special attention is devoted to structure data in the small q-region and to the diffusion coefficient. In view of the uncertainty of available experimental data and the ambiguity in theoretical approaches, we emphasize in this study the role of numerical methods.