Electric field fluctuations in the two-dimensional Coulomb fluid

Abstract

The structure factor for electric field correlations in the two dimensional Coulomb fluid is simulated and compared to theories of the dielectric function. Singular changes in the structure factor occur at the BKT insulator to conductor transition, as well as at a higher temperature correlation transition between a poor electrolyte and perturbed Debye-Hückel fluid. Structure factors are found to differ in the canonical and grand canonical ensembles, with the poor electrolyte showing full ensemble inequivalence. We identify mechanisms of `underscreening' and `pinch point' scattering that are relevant to experiments on ionic liquids and artificial spin ice respectively.

18 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Statistical mechanics and dynamics of solvable models with long-range interactions
• Extensive degeneracy, Coulomb phase and magnetic monopoles in an artificial realization of the square ice model
• Underscreening in concentrated electrolytes
• The importance of the weak: Interaction modifiers in artificial spin ices
• Topological-sector fluctuations and ergodicity breaking at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition
• Screening and the Pinch Point Paradox in Spin Ice