Revisiting anomalous structures in liquid Ga

Abstract

In terms of an interatomic pair potential, which well characterizes the dynamic properties of liquid Ga, we investigate again the origin of the well known high-q shoulder in the static structure factor of the liquid. Similar to the results of Gong's simulation at high temperature, dimers with extremely short bond lengths are indeed found in our model just above the melting point, but our results indicate that it is unlikely for the high-q shoulder to be produced by these dimers. Instead, based on our model, the high-q shoulder is resulted from some medium-range order, which is related to the structures beyond the first shell of the radial distribution function, caused by Friedel oscillations within a nanoscale range.