A New Approach to the Potential Energy of Solids

Abstract

A general theory is developed to investigate the expression for potential energy without using (i) empirical results and (ii) process of parameterizing. The simple approach of thermodynamics is adopted to obtain the expressions for the interaction energy of solids in terms of interatomic separation and crystal volume. The new findings have been applied to obtain the expressions for bulk modulus and pressure. The variation of the potential energy function, which provides a means to understand the stability of a crystal has been found in excellent agreements to the earlier results. The use of obtained harmonic and anharmonic force constants may be of much help to understand the dynamical behavior of solids with special reference to the many-body theories.