Criterion for the occurrence of the gas-liquid phase transition.
Using Yang-Lee theory of phase transition and our extension, it is found that for a real fluid, both the singularity of canonical partition function and the critical point of the gas-liquid phase transition occur precisely at the temperature when all the cluster integrals become positive. The critical temperature is determined by the limit of the first zeros of the cluster integrals.
Wang
Xian-Zhi
XZ
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Xzwang@sjtu.edu.cn