Negative specific heat in a Lennard-Jones-like gas with long-range interactions

Abstract

We study, through molecular dynamics, a conservative two-dimensional Lennard-Jones-like gas (with attractive potential ∝r−α). We consider the effect of the range index α of interactions, number of particles, total energy and particle density. We detect negative specific heat when the interactions become long-ranged (0⩽α/d<1).