Transcending Lindemann's predictions for the melting temperatures of metals and for the long-wavelength limit of their liquid structure factors.

Lindemann's melting criterion remains useful. However, one prediction it makes for liquid metals (our focus here) is that the long-wavelength limit of the structure factor S(q) at freezing, STm(0), where Tm is the melting temperature, is a universal constant. For 34 metals we have calculated STm(0) from input data, which is essentially the measured Tm and the surface thickness L, defined near freezing as the product of isothermal compressibility and surface tension. To complete the characterization of STm(0) we fit to one metal, chosen as Rb, for which STm(0) is well established experimentally. For a wide variety of metals considered, STm(0) is then found to vary by a factor of 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]