Kinetic Theory of Soft Matter. The Penetrable-Sphere Model

Abstract

The penetrable-sphere model has been introduced in the literature to describe the peculiar thermodynamic behavior of some colloidal systems. In this model the interaction potential is $\phi(r)=\epsilon>0$ if the two spheres are overlapped ($r<\sigma$) and $\phi(r)=0$ otherwise ($r>\sigma$). In this paper the shear viscosity, thermal conductivity, and self-diffusion coefficients of a dilute gas of penetrable spheres are evaluated. It is found that the effective collision frequency $\nu(T^*)$ grows as $\sqrt{T^*}$ up to $T^*\equiv k_BT/\epsilon\simeq 0.25$, reaches a maximum at $T^*\simeq 0.415$ and then decays as ${T^*}^{-3/2}\log T^*$ for large temperatures. The results are applied to the hydrodynamic profiles in the steady Fourier and Couette flows.