The manuscript entitled “Experimental evidence of the ferroelectric phase transition near the $λ-$point in liquid water” has just been accepted to JETP Letters (Russian Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters) for immediate publication. This is a joint work of the physics team of Quantum and the experimentalists from the Institute of Natural Resources,Ecology and Cryology SB RAS, Butina 26, Chita, 672000,Russia. The experimental evidence reported in the work supports the ferro-electric phase transition as the major driving force behind the so-called lambda-singularity in supercooled water. We believe that the physics of the phase transition is the easiest practical explanation of the enourmous values of the dielectric constant of water at room (or physiological) temperatures. The continuous model based on the field theory representation of a polar liquid works well and explains the observed phenomena in good agreement with the experimental data.

Experimental evidence of the ferroelectric phase transition near the $λ-$point in liquid water

P.O. Fedichev, L.I. Menshikov, G.S. Bordonskiy, A.O. Orlov

We studied dielectric properties of nano-sized liquid water samples confined in polymerized silicates MCM-41 characterized by the porous sizes \sim 3-10nm. We report the direct measurements of the dielectric constant by the dielectric spectroscopy method at frequencies 25Hz-1MHz and demonstrate clear signatures of the second-order phase transition of ferroelectric nature at temperatures next to the \lambda- point in the bulk supercooled water. The presented results support the previously developed polar liquid phenomenology and hence establish its applicability to model actual phenomena in liquid water.

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