A unified treatment of polar solvation using electrostatic fluctuations

A unified description of solvation in dielectric media characterized by a static relative permittivity ε is presented. The approach is based on probability distributions representing fluctuating dipole moments and electric fields and goes beyond the traditional mean-field approach. In addition to reproducing some standard results, we present an expression for the solvation free energy of a dielectric sphere immersed in an infinite dielectric medium. Furthermore, the solvation process is analyzed in detail by decomposing the solvation free energy into its energetic and entropic contributions.