Molecular dynamics simulation of the liquid–vapor interface: The Lennard-Jones fluid

In this work we present new molecular dynamics simulation results for the liquid–vapor interface of the pure Lennard-Jones fluid. Our aims were further investigations on the simulation setup and the simulation parameters to obtain reliable data for the coexisting densities as well as for the surface tension. The influence of the cut-off distance to the interfacial properties is investigated and long-range corrections to both the dynamics and the surface tension are applied. It is found that the saturated liquid densities from the surface simulations agree with those from the NpT+test particle method within 1% for sufficiently large simulation boxes; the saturated vapor densities agree within 4%. In order to obtain reliable values for the surface tension, cut-off radii of at least 5 molecular diameters supplemented by a tail correction are required.