Abstract
S. Belli: „Correlation functions in liquids with localized interactions”
Department of Theoretical Physics, University Trieste, Italy
In the last decades theory and simulation made great progress in describing both structure and thermodynamics of the liquid phase of systems characterized by spherically symmetric potentials, whereas a thorough understanding of the effects of anisotropic potentials is still lacking. In the work we are going to develop, we want to analyse the structure of particles interacting with potentials characterized by a hard-sphere short range repulsion and attractive square-well sites not homogeneously distributed over the surface (patchy colloids). Such a potential could give an approximate treatment to complex system, such as proteins in solution, as suggested by Frenkel and Kern. The main task of my work is to compare "experimental" data coming from Monte Carlo simulations of isotropic and anisotropic square-well systems with the results given by the solution of the theory of simple liquids integral equations. In particular I will describe the way I'm going to extract the "bridge function" of such systems from numerical simulations, so that to compare it with the "universal" behaviour of hard-sphere systems and the most accurate closure equations proposed so far. Our goal will be to understand how anisotropy and the other parameters characterizing the potential affect the shape of the bridge function, so that to furnish a useful guideline for the solution and improvement of the integral equations for such systems.