American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 22(93)
DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.93.224501
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Water permeation through nanometric channels, generally a coupled many-body process, is described in this study by a single collective coordinate. A collective diffusion model is proposed in which water movement at equilibrium is characterized as an unbiased diffusion along this coordinate and water transport in the presence of a chemical potential difference is described as one-dimensional diffusion in a linear potential. The model allows one to determine the osmotic permeability of a water channel from equilibrium simulations.