Phase diagram for an attractive triangular potential within van der Waals-like theory

Abstract We calculate the liquid/solid coexistence phases within the context of a van der Waals-like theory. The attraction between particles is modeled by a triangular potential added to the hard-core repulsion. The role played by the range and the strength of interaction with the interparticle distance on the liquid–liquid, liquid–solid and solid–solid phase diagrams is addressed and investigated. For concreteness, we compare results for the attractive triangular and square well potentials and show explicitly the consequence of the range and the strength of interaction with distance on the critical temperature and the critical density.