Dielectric alignment of a non-polar molecule substituting a polar molecule in a lattice of molecular dipoles

The dielectric alignment of a dilute non-polar component in a polar solvent may be determined by NMR spectroscopy. In this paper a series expansion of the alignment up to second order terms in the dipolar interaction is presented for a non-polar molecule replacing a single polar molecule in a rigid lattice of molecular dipoles. Assuming isotropic polarizabilities for all molecules Van Vleck earlier applied the lattice model in a theory of the dielectric constant of a dilute solution.In the present calculation the polarizabilities of the non-polar molecule and the dipoles are assumed to be anisotropic and isotropic, respectively. The anisotropy of the non-polar molecule is relevant, since the value of the alignment is zero for the isotropic case. Different results are obtained for cubic lattices and for a lattice points are uniformly distributed.In absence of a rigid dipole moment of the solvent molecules the latter formula may be compared with that implicity deduced by Buckingham for the Kerr effect. In the limit of strong dipoles the orientation imposed by the rigid dipole moments appears to be the major contribution to the alignment of the non-polar molecule.