Second virial coefficients for helium-4 and helium-3 from accurate relativistic interaction potential

Abstract

The second virial coefficient and the second acoustic virial coefficient for helium-4 and helium-3 are computed for a wide range of temperatures (1K-1000K) using a highly accurate nonrelativistic interaction potential [M. Przybytek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 123401 (2017)] and a new representation of the relativistic and quantum-electrodynamic components. The effects of the longrange retardation and of the nonadiabatic coupling of the nuclear and electronic motion are also taken into account. The results of our calculations represent at least five-fold improvement in accuracy compared to the previous ab initio work. The computed virial coefficients agree well with the most accurate recent measurements but have significantly smaller uncertainty.