Second virial coefficients for helium-4 and helium-3 from accurate relativistic interaction potential

TL;DR

This paper calculates the second virial coefficients for helium-3 and helium-4 across a wide temperature range using a highly accurate interaction potential, improving precision and agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces highly accurate calculations of virial coefficients incorporating relativistic and quantum-electrodynamic effects, surpassing previous ab initio accuracy.

Findings

Results agree well with recent measurements

Achieved at least fivefold improvement in accuracy

Reduced uncertainty compared to prior work

Abstract

The second virial coefficient and the second acoustic virial coefficient for helium-4 and helium-3 are computed for a wide range of temperatures (0.5 - 1000K) using a highly accurate nonrelativistic interaction potential [M. Przybytek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 123401 (2017)] and recalculated relativistic and quantum-electrodynamic components. The effects of the long-range retardation and of the nonadiabatic coupling of the nuclear and electronic motion are also taken into account. The results of our calculations represent at least fivefold improvement in accuracy compared to the previous ab initio work. The computed virial coefficients agree well with the most accurate recent measurements but have significantly smaller uncertainty.