Structure of hard sphere fluids in narrow cylindrical pores

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Abstract
The structure of hard sphere fluid confined to cylindrical capillaries in equilibrium with the bulk fluid phase is considered. Simple analytical approaches are examined and compared with the results of simultaneous grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo simulations. The validity of the limiting law according to which the fluid density in the capillary approaches its fugacity in vanishingly narrow pores is confirmed. The truncated graphical expansion around the exact narrow pore limit is found to represent a useful approximation for very narrow capillaries. In systems with the pore diameter exceeding a few diameters of the spheres and at the reduced bulk densities of the fluid ρbσ3≤0.6, the Percus–Yevick approximation provides a satisfactory description of the fluid distribution.