Ferro-electric phase transition in a polar liquid and the nature of lambda-transition in supercooled water

Water is a major and all-important example of a strongly interacting polar liquid. Dielectric properties of water surrounding nano-scale objects pose a fundamentally important problem in physics, chemistry, structural biology and in silica drug design. The issue of temperature dependence of dielectric constant, the role of fluctuations and a possibility of a ferro-electric phase transition in a polar liquid is fairly old . It attracted a new attention when a new phase transition (so called lambda-transition) was observed in supercooled water at critical temperatures between T_{c}=228K and T_{c}=231.4K . Isothermal compressibility, density, diffusion coefficient, viscosity and static dielectric constant \epsilon and other quantities diverge as T_{c} is approached, which is signature of a second order phase transition. The singularity of \epsilon is a feature of a ferro-electric transition . However, given a complexity of interactions between water molecules, the physical picture behind this phenomenon is not entirely clear . In the phase transition is explained as a formation of a rigid network of hydrogen bonds. On the other hand a ferro-electric hypothesis was also proposed and supported by molecular-dynamics simulations (MD). For example, a ferro-electric liquid phase was observed in a model of the so called ``soft spheres'' with static dipole moments . In fact, the existence of a ferro-electric phase appears to be model independent: domains where formed both in MD calculations with hard spheres with point dipoles and with soft spheres with extended dipoles .

In the our latest publication, Ferro-electric phase transition in a polar liquid and the nature of lambda-transition in supercooled water, we develop two related approaches to calculate free energy of a polar liquid. We show that long range nature of dipole interactions between the molecules leads to para-electric state instability at sufficiently low temperatures and to a second-order phase transition. We establish the transition temperature, T_{c}, both within mean field and ring diagrams approximation and demonstrate that the ferro-electric transition is a sound physical explanation behind the experimentally observed \lambda-transition in supercooled water. Finally we discuss dielectric properties, the role of fluctuations and establish connections with earlier phenomenological models of polar liquids.

Reference: arXiv:0808.0991 [ps, pdf, other]

Title: Ferro-electric phase transition in a polar liquid and the nature of \lambda-transition in supercooled water

Authors: P.O. Fedichev, L.I. Menshikov

Comments: 4 pages, 1 eps figure

Subjects: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)