Variational perturbation theory for electrolyte solutions

Lue, Leo; Wu, Jianzhong, ed. (2016) Variational perturbation theory for electrolyte solutions. In: Variational Methods in Molecular Modeling. Molecular Modeling and Simulation . Springer, pp. 137-154. ISBN 9789811025006 (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2502-0_5)

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Abstract

In most approaches to the statistical mechanics, the focus is on the particles in the system, where the partition function is given as an integral over their positions and orientations. In this chapter, we consider a field theoretic perspective, where the focus is on the interaction fields generated by the particles in the system, rather than the particles themselves. This approach has some advantages in that it can account for the large scale fluctuations in the system with natural approximation schemes. The two that are considered in this work are the mean-field approximation and variational perturbation theory. For electrolyte solutions, this leads naturally to the Poisson-Boltzmann theory and its improved modifications.

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