Thermodynamic Properties of the Fluid and Solid Phases for Inverse Power Potentials

The two computer methods of Monte Carlo and lattice dynamics are used to determine fluid and face-centered-cubic solid thermodynamic properties for classical particles interacting with pairwise-additive inverse 4th, 6th, and 9th power potentials. These results, together with those already on hand for 12th power and hard-sphere potentials, provide a complete, and remarkably simple, description of the dependence of the pure-phase thermodynamics and the melting transition on the “softness” of the pair potential.