Mayer f-function
Encyclopedia
The Mayer f-function is an auxiliary function that often appears in the series expansion of thermodynamic quantities related to classical many-particle systems.Donald Allan McQuarrie, Statistical Mechanics (HarperCollins
, 1976), page 228
where the bold labels
and 
denote the continuous degrees of freedom associated with the particles, e.g.,
for spherically symmetric particles and
for rigid non-spherical particles where
denotes position and 
the orientation parametrized e.g. by Euler angles
. The Mayer f-function is then defined as
where
the inverse absolute temperature
in units of (Temperature times the Boltzmann constant
)-1 .
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, 1976), page 228
Definition
Consider a system of classical particles interacting through a pair-wise potentialwhere the bold labels
and denote the continuous degrees of freedom associated with the particles, e.g.,for spherically symmetric particles and
for rigid non-spherical particles where
denotes position and the orientation parametrized e.g. by Euler anglesEuler angles
The Euler angles are three angles introduced by Leonhard Euler to describe the orientation of a rigid body. To describe such an orientation in 3-dimensional Euclidean space three parameters are required...
. The Mayer f-function is then defined as
where
the inverse absolute temperatureTemperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...
in units of (Temperature times the Boltzmann constant
)-1 .