Yukawa particles in a confining potential

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of Yukawa particles under confinement, demonstrating the effectiveness of mean-field theory in weak coupling and density functional theory in strong coupling regimes for predicting particle distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a density functional theory for strongly correlated Yukawa particles that outperforms mean-field approaches without adjustable parameters.

Findings

Mean-field theory accurately predicts particle distribution in weak coupling.

Density functional theory matches simulations in strong coupling.

Correlations are crucial for understanding strongly confined Yukawa particles.

Abstract

We study the density distribution of repulsive Yukawa particles confined by an external potential. In the weak coupling limit, we show that the mean-field theory is able to accurately account for the particle distribution. In the strong coupling limit, the correlations between the particles become important and the mean-field theory fails. For strongly correlated systems, we construct a density functional theory which provides an excellent description of the particle distribution, without any adjustable parameters.