title: Density-functional theory of inhomogeneous fluids in the canonical ensemble
abstract: We present a density-functional approach for dealing with inhomogeneous fluids in the canonical ensemble. A general relation is proposed between the free-energy functionals in the canonical and the grand canonical ensembles. The minimization of the canonical-ensemble free-energy functional gives rise to Euler-Lagrange equations which involve averaged Ornstein-Zernike equations of second and third order. The theory is especially appropriate for systems with a small, fixed number of particles. As an example of application we obtain accurate results for the density profile of a hard-sphere fluid in a closed spherical cavity that contains only a few particles.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisica Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain.
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: White
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Roman
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Velasco