The ferroelectric transition of dipolar hard spheres

Abstract

We investigate by Monte Carlo simulation the size dependence of the variation of the polarization and the dielectric constant with temperature for dipolar hard spheres at the two densities ρσ3=0.80 and 0.88. From the crossing of the fourth-order cumulant for different system sizes first more precise estimates of the ferroelectric transition temperatures are obtained. Theoretical approaches, when predicting an ordering transition, are shown to generally overestimate the critical temperature.