Isochoric specific heat in the Dual Model of Liquids and comparison with the Phonon theory of Liquid Thermodynamics
Abstract We continue in this paper to illustrate the implications of the Dual Model of Liquids (DML) by deriving the expression for the isochoric specific heat as a function of the collective degrees of freedom available at a given temperature and comparing it with the analogous expression obtained in the Phonon Theory of Liquid Thermodynamics. The Dual Model of Liquids has been recently proposed as a model describing the dynamics of liquids at the mesoscopic level. Bringing together the early pictures of Brillouin and Frenkel and the recent experimental outcomes obtained by means of high energy scattering, liquids are considered in the DML as constituted by a population of wave packets, responsible for the propagation of elastic and thermal perturbations, and of dynamic aggregates of molecules, in continuous re-arrangement, diving in an ocean of amorphous, disordered liquid. The collective degrees of freedom contribute to the exchange of energy and momentum between the material particles and the lattice particles, which the liquids are supposed to be composed of in the DML.First, we show that the expression obtained for the specific heat in the DML is in line with the experimental results. Second, its comparison with that of the Phonon Theory of Liquid Thermodynamics allows getting interesting insights about the limiting values of the collective degrees of freedom and on that of the isobaric thermal expansion coefficient, two quantities that appear related to each other in this framework