Abstract
If one measures the dielectric constant of a water in oil microemulsion the large increase of this dielectric constant both as function of the temperature as well as a function of the volume fraction of water suggests that the water droplets will bind together in clusters. In order to analyse this suggestion in more detail we derive a systematic expansion of the Clausius-Mossotti function in terms of integrals over products of excess cluster polarizabilities and correlation functions. It is found that the excess polarizability of a cluster of spherical droplets is zero except when the spheres almost touch each other. Crucial for this property is the fact that the water spheres are conducting or if they are not conducting have a dielectric constant much larger than the dielectric constant of oil. The large increase of the dielectric constant is a consequence of the increase of the number of bound clusters. An explicit formula is given for the resulting temperature and volume fraction dependence of the dielectric constant.
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