Liquid Water, the ``Most Complex'' Liquid:
New Results in Bulk, Nanoconfined, and Biological Environments
H. Eugene Stanley, S. V. Buldyrev, G. Franzese, S.Han, P. Kumar,
M. Mazza, K. Stokely, L. Xu, F. Mallamace, and S.-H. Chen
Departments of Physics and Chemistry,
Boston Univ., Boston, MA 02215 USA
Department of Physics, Yeshiva Univ.,
500 West 185th Street, New York, NY 10033 USA
Dipartimento di Fisica and CNISM,
Univ. di Messina, I-98122, Messina, Italy
Nuclear Science and Engineering Department,
MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
We will introduce some of the 63 anomalies of the most complex of
liquids, water. We will demonstrate some recent progress in
understanding these anomalies by combining information provided by
recent experiments and simulations on water in bulk, nanoconfined, and
biological environments. We will interpret evidence from recent
experiments designed to test the hypothesis that liquid water may
display ``polymorphism'' in that it can exist in two different
phases---and discuss recent work on water's transport anomalies [1] as
well as the unusual behavior of water in biological environments [2].
Finally, we will discuss how the general concept of liquid polymorphism
[3] is proving useful in understanding anomalies in other liquids, such
as silicon, silica, and carbon, as well as metallic glasses, which have
in common that they are characterized by two characteristic length
scales in their interactions.
[1] L. Xu, F. Mallamace, Z. Yan, F. W. Starr, S. V. Buldyrev, and
H. E. Stanley, ``Appearance of a Fractional Stokes-Einstein Relation
in Water and a Structural Interpretation of Its Onset,'' Nature
Physics 5, 565--569 (2009).
[2] P. Kumar, Z. Yan, L. Xu, M. G. Mazza, S. V. Buldyrev,
S.-H. Chen. S. Sastry, and H. E. Stanley, "Glass Transition in
Biomolecules and the Liquid-Liquid Critical Point of Water,"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 177802 (2006).
[3] H. E. Stanley, ed., Liquid Polymorphism [Advances in Chemical
Physics], series edited by S. A. Rice (Wiley, New York, 2010).