self-diffusion in liquid gallium and hard sphere model

Incoherent and coherent components of quasielastic neutron scattering have been studied in the temperature range of T = 313 K – 793 K aiming to explore the applicability limits of the hard-sphere approach for the microscopic dynamics of liquid gallium, which is usually considered as a non-hard-sphere system. It was found that the non-hard-sphere effects come into play at the distances shorter than the average interatomic distance. The longer range diffusive dynamics of liquid Ga is dominated by the repulsive forces between the atoms.