• Accepted Paper

Statistical-mechanical model for dipolar chain formation

Zhongqi Liang and Jesús Peréz-Ríos

Phys. Rev. E - Accepted 28 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n5ly-yvhc

Abstract

Dipolar fluids are known to exhibit complex self-assembly at low temperatures, yet a compact thermodynamic description of their aggregate statistics has remained elusive. Using molecular dynamics simulations of Stockmayer particles with a purely repulsive WCA core, we confirm that over broad regions of the (ρ, T) phase space the chain-size distribution follows an exponential decay with characteristic size s0. Within this regime, we find that s0 can be accurately described by an effective thermodynamic potential ϕ that incorporates bonding energy, a crowding penalty, and translational entropy. Identifying deviations from this ideal scaling provides a further division of the phase space into four regions. Therefore, our results locate a regime of relatively simple chain statistics and offer an alternative regime-based perspective on dipolar self-assembly.

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