On the second dielectric virial coefficients of methane and the inert gases

The induced quadrupole contribution to the distortion polarization term in the dielectric virial coefficient (B) has been evaluated for methane and the inert gases neon, argon, krypton and xenon. It is shown to be a substantial fraction of the experimental value of B for these systems. For argon the full ‘ classical ’ value of B is estimated by making use of a previous calculation of the classical overlap correction to the point polarizable particle model. It is shown that the classical value of B is in substantial agreement with experiment for this case.