Implications of high field dipolar saturation in solid dielectrics

Many (especially filled) dielectrics contain substantial quantities of permanent dipoles which result in an increased dielectric constant. At normal engineering fields, the polarizability produced by such dipoles is essentially constant, as the degree of polarization is small as a result of thermal effects (i.e., kBT is much greater than μE). However at very high fields as can occur around a defect, saturation might result in a decrease in the polarizability with field, so that the dielectric constant decreases with increasing field, which has the potential to result in instability. We develop the basic theory for such a system