Relative Resolution: A Hybrid Formalism for Fluid Mixtures

Abstract

We show here that molecular resolution is inherently hybrid in terms of relative separation: If molecules are close to each other, they must be characterized by a fine-grained (geometrically detailed) model, yet if molecules are far from each other, they may be described by a coarse-grained (isotropically simplified) model. We notably present an analytical expression for relating the two models by energy conservation. This hybrid framework is correspondingly capable of retrieving the structural and thermal behavior of various multi-component and multi-phase fluids across state space.