De Gennes Narrowing and Hard-Sphere Approach.

The energy width Δω of the quasielastic coherent dynamic structure factor S(Q, ω) for a simple liquid exhibits the oscillating dependence on wavenumber Q with the sharp minimum at Qmax corresponding to the maximum of the structure factor S(Q). The only known expression for Δω(Q) was derived for a dense hard-sphere (HS) fluid (Cohen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 1987, 59, 2872). Though this expression has been frequently used for the analysis of the experimental data obtained for liquid metals, until now, it has never been tested against a true HS fluid. A test performed by means of HS molecular dynamic simulations reveals a considerable discrepancy between the simulations results and the examined model. The main output of the analysis is the finding that the ΔωHS(Q) behavior is defined in terms of the average cage size, ⟨Lc⟩, rather than of the HS diameter, σHS. The simulated ΔωHS(Q) has been compared with the results for the soft-spherical potential. The microscopic dynamics of the soft-sphere fluid shows significant difference in comparison to the HS system. Nevertheless, the diffusive mobility of soft spheres can be characterized within the HS approximation using an effective diameter, σeff, and this parameter can be found from Δω(Q) at Q ≈ Qmax. A similar result has been obtained for the neutron scattering data measured for liquid Rb.