Paper detail

Order in the ground state of a simple cubic dipole lattice in an external field

Motivated by the presence of a lattice of rotating molecular dipoles in the high temperature phase of methylammonium lead iodide, we investigate the ground state of a simple cubic lattice of dipoles interacting with each other via the dipole-dipole interaction and with an external field via the Zeeman interaction. In the absence of an external field, the ground state is infinitely degenerate, and all the configurations in the ground state manifold are periodic along the three lattice axes with period 2. We numerically determine the ground state of a 1000-dipole lattice interacting with an external field, and we analyze the polarization, dipole orientation statistics and correlations in this state. These calculations show that for some special directions of the external field the two-site periodicity in the dipole configurations is preserved, while in the general case this periodicity is lost and complex dipole configurations form in the presence of the external field.