Strongly dipolar fluids at low densities compared to living polymers

We carried out extensive canonical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the dipo lar hard-sphere (DHS) fluid, with N=1024 particles at fixed reduced density rho*=0.05, in order to investigate the chainlike structure that occurs at low densities, for sufficiently large reduced dipole moments mu*. The disso ciation and recombination of chains during equilibrium runs suggest an anal ogy between the DHS's and a system of living polymers. This was checked qua ntitatively by comparing the results of the simulations with those of a the ory for living polymers taking into account the indistinguishability of the particles in self-assembled chains. Quantitative agreement between theoret ical and simulated mean chain lengths and number of monomers, was found for particular choices of the parameters used in the working definition of the MC chains.