Transient orientation and electrooptical properties of axially symmetric macromolecules in an electric field of arbitrary strength

The transient orientation, birefringence, and dichroism of macromolecules or particles in solution or suspension, resulting when an electric field is applied or reversed, have been studied by Brownian dynamics simulation. We consider the particular case of axisymmetric particles, for which the dynamics depends on a single rotational diffusion coefficients. In our simulations, we employ arbitrarily strong field-molecule interactions, so that our results are useful to characterize the deviation of the behavior at moderate and high fields from that predicted by existing theories for low fields. We propose the use of relaxation times that characterize the initial and the mean rate of the electrooptic transients, The variation of these relaxation times with field strength is very informative for the electrical properties of the particles.