The electronic structure of a liquid metal in the muffin-tin model

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Abstract
The theory of the electronic structure of a muffin-tin model of a liquid metal is presented. The formalism of renormalised perturbation theory is used, and this permits the single-site approximation to be imposed by a single self-consistency requirement. A number of approximation schemes are then generated by varying the decomposition of many-ion correlation functions. Most of the schemes are analogues of approximations which have previously been applied in tight-binding studies and in the purely formal treatment of multiple scattering theory in liquids. Calculations are performed using different approximation schemes for model strong ionic scatterers and with liquid structure factors obtained from experiment. Appreciable discrepancies exist between different approximation schemes: this permits a discussion of the applicability of the single-site approximation to different physical systems and illustrates some deficiencies of this widely studied technique.