Comment on "Monte Carlo study of structural ordering in charged colloids using a long-range attractive interaction"

A recent theoretical analysis [B. V. R. Tata and N. Ise, Phys. Rev. E 58, 3 3-37 (1998)] of interactions and phase transitions in charge-stabilized col loidal suspensions made reference to our previously published measurements [J. C. Crocker and D. G. Grier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 73,352 (1994); 77, 1897 (1 996); A. E. Larson and D. G. Grier, Nature (London) 385, 230 (1997)] of col loidal interactions. Tata and Ise claim that our measurements cannot distin guish between predictions of the Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek (D LVO) theory and those of the competing theory due to Sogami and Ise (SI). W e demonstrate that the DLVO theory accurately describes the measured intera ctions between isolated pairs of like-charged spheres, while the SI theory fails both quantitatively and qualitatively to describe our data.