ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the statistical mechanics of charged systems. These arise most typically in what are called ‘soft matter systems’: these are systems with some relevance to biology, like membranes, biomolecules, viruses and the like. The dominating contribution is due to electrostatics, and the main task then is to compute the electrostatic potential of the proteins and their complexes. Interest has therefore risen in systematic extensions of the theory of continuum electrostatics that allow to account for spatial variations of the dielectric behaviour of the solvent, in particular near the boundary of a protein. One strategy to improve on Poisson-Boltzmann theory for applications to biomolecules has been to include effective water properties; one such approach - phenomenological, ‘nonlocal’ electrostatics approach - has been pursued further by several researchers. An alternative approach has been to include water molecules in an explicit fashion into the continuum theory.