Transport and relaxation phenomena in suspensions of dipolar Brownian particles in an electric field

A system of noninteracting nonspherical Brownian particles with dipole moment parallel to the symmetry axis is studied in the presence of an external homogeneous electric field. A generalized Fokker-Planck equation is introduced which takes into account anisotropic translational and rotational friction as well as a translational-rotational coupling via a Magnus force term. From the corresponding kinetic equation for the reduced distribution function for rotationally overdamped particles a system of transport-relaxation equations for macroscopic variables is derived. They are used to treat the particle diffusion under the influence of the electric field and to calculate the spectral functions for infrared absorption and depolarized Rayleigh light scattering.