CROSSOVER APPROACH TO GLOBAL CRITICAL PHENOMENA IN FLUIDS

Long-range critical fluctuations appear to affect the thermodynamic properties of fluids in a very large range of temperatures and densities around the critical point. To treat these effects the universal scaling laws, which are valid in the immediate vicinity of the critical point, need to be extended to account for a crossover to classical thermodynamic behavior far away from the critical point. The paper considers approaches for dealing with this problem and attempts to elucidate the physical features of the crossover from singular asymptotic critical thermodynamic behavior to classical thermodynamic behavior.