Monte-Carlo simulations of strongly interacting dipolar fluids between two conducting walls

We report Monte-Carlo simulation results for a strongly interacting dipolar soft sphere (DSS) fluid confined between two conducting, planar walls. The long-range dipolar interactions, including contributions from the image dipoles in the metal, are handled by mapping onto a problem with three-dimensional (3d) periodicity which can be treated by conventional Ewald summation methods. Considering two different wall separations our results indicate the occurence of wall-induced local and long-range ordering very similar to the related case of insulating walls. To understand this behavior we present ground-state (lattice) calculations on the basis of the Ewald sums, as well as simple macroscopic arguments appropriate for dipolar systems between conducting walls.