No Arabic abstract
We present an exact field-theoretic formulation for a fluctuating, generally asymmetric, salt density in the presence of a charged plate. The non-linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation is obtained as the saddle-point of our field theory action. Focusing on the case of symmetric salt, we systematically compute first-order corrections arising from electrolytes fluctuation to the free energy density, which can be explicitly obtained in closed form. We find that for systems with low to moderate salt density, fluctuation corrections to the free-energy depends sensitively on the salt concentration as well as their charge valency. Further, we find that electrolyte fluctuation leads to a reduced electrostatic repulsion between two point-charges when they are close to the charged plate.
The self-consistent field theory (SCFT) is used to study the mean potential near a charged plate inside a $m:-n$ electrolyte. A perturbation series is developed in terms of $g = 4 pi b/ell_{rm {scriptscriptstyle DB}}$, where $b, ell_{rm{scriptscriptstyle DB}}$ are Bjerrum length and {em bare} Debye length respectively. To the zeroth order, we obtain nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann theory. For asymmetric electrolytes ($m eq n$), the first order (one-loop) correction to mean potential contains a {em secular term}, which indicates the breakdown of regular perturbation method. Using a renormalizaton group transformation (RG), we remove the secular term and obtain a globally well-behaved one-loop approximation with {em a renormalized Debye length} and {em a renormalized surface charge density}. Furthermore, we find that if the counter-ions are multivalent, the surface charge density is renormalized substantially {em downwards}, and may undergo a change of sign, if the bare surface charge density is sufficiently large.
A tensorial representation of $phi^4$ field theory introduced in Phys. Rev. D. 93, 085005 (2016) is studied close to six dimensions, with an eye towards a possible realization of an interacting conformal field theory in five dimensions. We employ the two-loop $epsilon$-expansion, two-loop fixed-dimension renormalization group, and non-perturbative functional renormalization group. An interacting, real, infrared-stable fixed point is found near six dimensions, and the corresponding anomalous dimensions are computed to the second order in small parameter $epsilon=6-d$. Two-loop epsilon-expansion indicates, however, that the second-order corrections may destabilize the fixed point at some critical $epsilon_c <1$. A more detailed analysis within all three computational schemes suggests that the interacting, infrared-stable fixed point found previously collides with another fixed point and becomes complex when the dimension is lowered from six towards five. Such a result would conform to the expectation of triviality of $O(2)$ field theories above four dimensions.
We have studied the electrostatic screening effect of NaCl solutions on the interactions between anionic lipid bilayers in the fluid lamellar phase using a Poisson-Boltzmann based mean-field approach with constant charge and constant potential limiting charge regulation boundary conditions. The full DLVO potential, including the electrostatic, hydration and van der Waals interactions, was coupled to thermal bending fluctuations of the membranes via a variational Gaussian Ansatz. This allowed us to analyze the coupling between the osmotic pressure and the fluctuation amplitudes and compare them both simultaneously with the measured dependence on the bilayer separation, determined by the small-angle X-ray scattering experiments. High-structural resolution analysis of the scattering data revealed no significant changes of membrane structure as a function of salt concentration. Parsimonious description of our results is consistent with the constant charge limit of the general charge regulation phenomenology, with fully dissociated lipid charge groups, together with a four-fold reduction of the membranes bending rigidity upon increasing NaCl concentration.
In a system of noisy self-propelled particles with interactions that favor directional alignment, collective motion will appear if the density of particles increases beyond a certain threshold. In this paper, we argue that such a threshold may depend also on the profiles of the perturbation in the particle directions. Specifically, we perform mean-field, linear stability, perturbative and numerical analyses on an approximated form of the Fokker-Planck equation describing the system. We find that if an angular perturbation to an initially homogeneous system is large in magnitude and highly localized in space, it will be amplified and thus serves as an indication of the onset of collective motion. Our results also demonstrate that high particle speed promotes collective motion.
The Boltzmann equation is the traditional framework in which one extends the time-dependent mean field classical description of a many-body system to include the effect of particle-particle collisions in an approximate manner. A semiclassical extension of this approach to quantum many-body systems was suggested by Uehling and Uhlenbeck in 1933 for both Fermi and Bose statistics, and many further generalization of this approach are known as the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) equations. Here I suggest a pure quantum version of the BUU type of equations, which is mathematically equivalent to a generalized Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory extended to superfluid systems.