A quantity that occurs in the calculation of virial coefficients; it is defined by f = exp(–V2/kT) – 1, where V2 is the two-body interaction potential energy, k is the Boltzmann constant, and T is the thermodynamic temperature. It is related to the second virial coefficient B by:
where NA is the Avogadro number and V is the volume of the system. This equation simplified to:
in the case of closed-shell atoms and octahedral and tetrahedral molecules. When particles are so far apart that the interaction V → 0, then f → 0 also, but when the particles are so close together that the interaction V → ∞, then f → –1. This enables strong repulsive interactions between particles to be analysed in terms of f but not of V. The function is named after the US physicist Joseph Mayer (1904–83), who proposed and discussed it in his 1937 analysis of the statistical mechanics of interacting particles.