Close to the edge of Fundamental Measure Theory: density functional for hard sphere mixtures

Abstract

We analyze the structure of the Fundamental Measure Theory for the free energy density functional of hard sphere mixtures. A comparative study of the different versions of the theory, and other density functional approaches, is done in terms of their generic form for the three-points direct correlation function, which shows clearly the main advantages and problems of the different approximations. A recently developed version for the monocomponent case is extended to mixtures of hard spheres with different radii, and a new prescription is presented to obtain the exact dimensional crossover of those mixtures in the one-dimensional (1D) limit. Numerical results for planar wall-fluid interfaces and for the 1D fluid are presented.