Well-Posedness of the Iterative Boltzmann Inversion

Abstract

The iterative Boltzmann inversion is a fixed point iteration to determine an effective pair potential for an ensemble of identical particles in thermal equilibrium from the corresponding radial distribution function. Although the method is reported to work reasonably well in practice, it still lacks a rigorous convergence analysis. In this paper we provide some first steps towards such an analysis, and we show under quite general assumptions that the associated fixed point operator is Lipschitz continuous (in fact, differentiable) in a suitable neighborhood of the true pair potential, assuming that such a potential exists. In other words, the iterative Boltzmann inversion is well-defined in the sense that if the kth iterate of the scheme is sufficiently close to the true pair potential then the k+ 1 st iterate is an admissible pair potential, which again belongs to the domain of the fixed point operator. On our way we establish important properties of the cavity distribution function and provide a proof of a statement formulated by Groeneveld concerning the rate of decay at infinity of the Ursell function associated with a Lennard-Jones type potential.