Duality of liquids

Abstract

Liquids flow, making them remarkably distinct from solids and close to gases. At the same time, interactions in liquids are strong as in solids. The combination of these two properties is believed to be the ultimate obstacle to constructing a general theory of liquids. Here, we adopt a new approach to liquids: instead of focusing on the problem of strong interactions, we zero in on the relative contributions of vibrational and diffusional motion in liquids. We subsequently show that from the point of view of thermodynamics, liquid energy and specific heat are given, to a very good approximation, by their vibrational contributions as in solids, for relaxation times spanning 15 orders of magnitude. We therefore find that liquids show an interesting {\it duality} not hitherto known: they are close to solids from the thermodynamical point of view and to gases from the point of view of flow. We discuss the experimental implications of this approach.