Physics

Dr Rahul Dandekar
International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

Many of the curious thermodynamic properties of water can be traced back to the unique patterns of Hydrogen bonding, which lead to the formation of a percolating H-bond network even in the liquid phase. We develop and study a semi-empirical lattice model for this H-bond network, and study it on an infinite-dimensional lattice. We show that the model gives accurate predictions for the network correlations even at normal temperatures and pressures. We also study the phase diagram, lending support to a neglected hypothesis for the origin of the anomalous properties of water.