We present a combined experimental and numerical study of the equilibrium cluster formation in globular protein solutions under no-added salt conditions. We show that a cluster phase emerges as a result of a competition between a long-range screened Coulomb repulsion and a short-range attraction. A simple effective potential, in which only depth and width of the attractive part of the potential are optimized, accounts in a remarkable way for the wavevector dependence of the X-ray scattering structure factor.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0607264,
title = {Modeling Equilibrium Clusters in Lysozyme Solutions},
author = {Frédéric Cardinaux and Anna Stradner and Peter Schurtenberger and Francesco Sciortino and Emanuela Zaccarelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0607264},
year = {2016}
}