Putting water on a lattice: The importance of long wavelength density fluctuations in theories of hydrophobic and interfacial phenomena

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the significance of long wavelength density fluctuations in understanding hydrophobic and interfacial phenomena, proposing a lattice-based approach to accurately model soft interface fluctuations and solvation behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to incorporate long wavelength density fluctuations in lattice models, improving the accuracy of theories related to hydrophobic effects and interfacial phenomena.

Findings

Accurately captures complex solvation behaviors

Addresses fundamental challenges in modeling soft interfaces

Provides a simple yet effective approach to nonlinearities

Abstract

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.