Putting water on a lattice: the importance of long wavelength density fluctuations in theories of hydrophobic and interfacial phenomena.
The physics of air-water interfaces plays a central role in modern theories of the hydrophobic effect. Implementing these theories, however, has been hampered by the difficulty of addressing fluctuations in the shape of such soft interfaces. We show that this challenge is a fundamental consequence of mapping long wavelength density variations onto discrete degrees of freedom. Drawing from studies of surface roughness in lattice models, we account for the resulting nonlinearities simply but accurately. Simulations show that this approach captures complex solvation behaviors quantitatively.
Material Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Suriyanarayanan
S
Vaikuntanathan
Material Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Phillip L
PL
Geissler