Yukawa particles in a confining potential

Matheus Girotto, Alexandre P. dos Santos, Thiago Colla, Yan Levin

Published 2014-05-23Version 1

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.