The optical dielectric function of polarizable liquids

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Abstract
We report numerical simulations of the density of states and the frequency dependent dielectric function for optical frequencies of a polarizable Lennard-Jones atomic fluid from gas to liquid densities. Our simulations at high densities can be successfully interpreted in terms of fluctuations around a fcc solid reference model. The mean spherical approximation, which is based on a resummed density expansion, is shown to give reasonable predictions for intermediate densities but is shown to fail at liquid densities. We discuss the transition from the gas phase limit to the liquid phase theories, and show that for liquids nuclear motions do not strongly affect the line shape, whereas local field effects do.