THE ASYMMETRY OF THE COEXISTENCE CURVE IN LIQUID-VAPOR PHASE TRANSITIONS ; DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract
The usual way to calculate the critical parameters of a coexistence curve is to separate the coexistence curve from the diameter, taking advantage of the symmetry properties of the diameter. We showed that this procedure presents several drawbacks, the most severe being that the critical concentration may not be obtained with accuracy from the fits. A new computing way able to determine from a single fit all the parameters of the coexistence curve is presented. Two of the several advantages of using the new procedure are : - the divergence of the diameter is obtained with a better precision that any of the two step method. - the coupling between all the parameters, including the important complying between A[MATH] and [MATH], may be analyzed in detail.