A van der Waals free energy in electrolytes revisited.
A system of three electrolytes separated by two parallel planes is considered. Each region is described by a dielectric constant and a Coulomb fluid in the Debye-Hückel regime. In their book Dispersion Forces, Mahanty and Ninham have given the van der Waals free energy of this system. We rederive this free energy by a different method, using linear response theory and the electrostatic Maxwell stress tensor for obtaining the dispersion force.
Jancovici
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Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Université de Paris-Sud, Unité Mixte de Recherche 8627 CNRS, Bâtiment 210, 91405, Orsay Cedex, France. Bernard.Jancovici@th.u-psud.fr