We present a Landau-Ginzburg theory for oil-water-surfactant mixtures with a scalar order parameter {ψ} for the oil-water subsystem and a vector {τ} for the surfactant part. A physical interpretation of the parameters in terms of single-membrane energetics is given. A detailed density-functional calculation yields three-phase coexistence between oil-rich, water-rich, and microemulsion phases, and modulated phases including lamellar, columnar, and cubic phases. The computed structure factor for water in the microemulsion phase shows a variety of trends in qualitative accord with experiments.
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Chen et al. (1990) studied this question.
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