On the coarse-grained density and compressibility of a non-ideal crystal

Abstract

The isothermal compressibility of a general crystal is derived and discussed within (classical) density functional theory. Starting from the microscopic particle density, we carefully coarse grain to obtain the thermodynamic compressibility and the long wavelength limits of the correlation functions of elasticity theory. We explicitly show that the isothermal compressibility is not the wavevector to zero limit of the (total) density correlation function. The latter also cannot be obtained from the static structure factor measured in a scattering experiment.