The pair distribution function describes the distribution of distances between pairs of particles contained within a given volume. Mathematically, if a and b are two particles in a fluid, the pair distribution function of b with respect to a, denoted by is the probability of finding the particle b at distance from a, with a taken as the origin of coordinates. Overview The pair distribution function is used to describe the distribution of objects within a medium (for example, oranges in a crate or nitrogen molecules in a gas cylinder). If the medium is homogeneous (i.e. every spatial location has identical properties), then there is an equal probability density for finding an object at any position : , where is the volume of the container. On the other hand, the likelihood of finding pairs of objects at given positions (i.e. the two-body probability density) is not uniform. For example, pairs of hard balls must be separated by at least the diameter of a ball. The pair distribution function is obtained by scaling the two-body probability density function by the total number of objects and the size of the container: . In the common case where the number of objects in the container is large, this simplifies to give: . Simple models and general properties The simplest possible pair distribution function assumes that all object locations are mutually independent, giving: , where is the separation between a pair of objects. However, this is inaccurate in the case of hard objects as discussed above, because it does not account for the minimum separation required between objects. The hole-correction (HC) approximation provides a better model: where is the diameter of one of the objects. Although the HC approximation gives a reasonable description of sparsely packed objects, it breaks down for dense packing. This may be illustrated by considering a box completely filled by identical hard balls so that each ball touches its neighbours. In this case, every pair of balls in the box is separated by a distance of exactly where is a positive whole number. The pair distribution for a volume completely filled by hard spheres is therefore a set of Dirac delta functions of the form: . Finally, it may be noted that a pair of objects which are separated by a large distance have no influence on each other's position (provided that the container is not completely filled). Therefore, .