Simulation study of the collective excitations in liquid sodium under high pressure.

The dynamic structure of liquid sodium is investigated using classical molecular dynamics simulations over a wide range of densities (from 739 to 4177 kg m). The interactions are described using screened pseudopotential formalism with Fiolhais model of electron-ion interaction. The effective pair potentials obtained are validated by comparing the predicted static structure, coordination number, self-diffusion coefficients and spectral density of the velocity autocorrelation function with results fromsimulations at the same state points. Both longitudinal and transverse collective excitations are computed from the corresponding structure functions and their evolution with density is investigated. The frequency of the longitudinal excitations increases with density, as well as the sound speed, which is extracted from their dispersion curves. The frequency of the transverse excitations also increases with density, but they cannot propagate over macroscopic distances and the propagation gap clearly appears. The values of the viscosity, which are extracted from these transverse functions are in good agreement with available results computed from stress autocorrelation functions.