The conductivity of strong electrolytes from stochastic density\n functional theory

Abstract

Stochastic density functional theory is applied to analyze the conductivity\nof strong two species electrolytes at arbitrary field strengths. The\ncorresponding stochastic equations for the density of the electrolyte species\nare solved by linearizing them about the mean density of ionic species,\nyielding an effective Gaussian theory. The non-equilibrium density-density\ncorrelation functions are computed and the conductivity of the electrolyte is\ndeduced. In the bulk, our results give a simple derivation of the results of\nOnsager and coworkers who used very different methods. The method developed\nhere can also be used to study electrolytes confined in one and two dimensions\nand interacting via either the three dimensional Coulomb interaction or the\nCoulomb interaction corresponding to that dimension of space.\n