We examine in full generality the phase behavior of systems whose constituent particles interact by means of potentials that do not diverge at the origin, are free of attractive parts, and decay fast enough to zero as the interparticle separation r goes to infinity. By employing a mean field-density functional theory which is shown to become exact at high temperatures and/or densities, we establish a criterion that determines whether a given system will freeze at all temperatures or it will display reentrant melting and an upper freezing temperature.

• Received 29 March 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.63.031206