Molecular Calculation of the Critical Parameters ofClassical Helium

We compute the vapor–liquid critical coordinates of a model of helium in which nuclear quantum effects are absent. We employ highly accurate ab initio pair and three-body potentials and calculate the critical parameters rigorously in two ways. First, we calculate the virial coefficients up to seventh order and find the point where an isotherm satisfies the critical conditions. Second, we use Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo (GEMC) to calculate the vapor–liquid equilibrium and extrapolate the phase envelope to the critical point. Both methods yield results that are consistent within their uncertainties. The critical temperature of “classical helium” is 13.0 K (compared to 5.2 K for real helium), the critical pressure is 0.93 MPa, and the critical density is 28.4 mol·L–1, with expanded uncertainties (corresponding to a 95% confidence interval) on the order of 0.1 K, 0.02 MPa, and 0.5 mol·L–1, respectively. The effect of three-body interactions on the location of the critical point is small (lowering the critical ...