Isotopic Fingerprints of Proton-mediated Dielectric Relaxation in Solid and Liquid Water
Chemical Physics
2026-03-17 v1 Soft Condensed Matter
Abstract
We report cross-validated measurements of the isotope effect on dielectric relaxation for four isotopologues of ice and water, including the 1-10^5 Hz region, in which only sporadic and inconsistent measurements were previously available. In ice, the relaxation rates exhibit an activated temperature dependence with an isotope-independent activation energy. Across 248-273 K, the H_2O/D_2O relaxation rate ratio remains constant at 2.0 \pm 0.1. This scaling agrees with Kramers' theory in the high-friction limit if the moving mass is the proton or deuteron, indicating that dielectric relaxation is governed by a classic proton transfer over an energy barrier rather than molecular reorientation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.09462,
title = {Isotopic Fingerprints of Proton-mediated Dielectric Relaxation in Solid and Liquid Water},
author = {Alexander Ryzhov and Pavel Kapralov and Mikhail Stolov and Anton Andreev and Aleksandra Radenovic and Viatcheslav Freger and Vasily Artemov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09462},
year = {2026}
}