  The self-consistent relaxation theory is employed to describe the collective
ion dynamics in strongly coupled Yukawa classical one-component plasmas. The
theory is applied to equilibrium states corresponding to intermediate screening
regimes with appropriate values of the structure and coupling parameters. The
information about the structure (the radial distribution function and the
static structure factor) and the thermodynamics of the system is sufficient to
describe collective dynamics over a wide range of spatial ranges, namely, from
the extended hydrodynamic to the microscopic dynamics scale. The main
experimentally measurable characteristics of the equilibrium collective
dynamics of ions -- the spectrum of the dynamic structure factor, the
dispersion parameters, the speed of sound and the sound attenuation -- are
determined within the framework of the theory without using any adjustable
parameters. The results demonstrate agreement with molecular dynamics
simulations. Thus a direct realization is presented of the key idea of
statistical mechanics: for the theoretical description of the collective
particle dynamics of equilibrium fluids it is sufficient to know the
interparticle interaction potential and the structural characteristics.
Comparison with alternative or complementary theoretical approaches is
provided.
