Mesoscopic field theory of ionic systems

A mesoscopic field theory for the primitive model of ionic systems with additional, short-range interactions is presented. Generic models in continuum space and with positions of the ions restricted to lattice sites of various lattices are described in detail. We describe briefly the field-theoretic methods and review the foundations of the mesoscopic description. The types of phase diagrams predicted by our theory for different versions of the model are presented and discussed. They all agree with recent simulations. On the quantitative level our theory yields an RPM tricritical-point location on the sc lattice which is in good agreement with the simulation results. Arguments indicating that the critical point in the RPM belongs to the Ising universality class are given.