The dielectric properties of confined water is of fundamental interest and is still controversial. For water confined in channels with height smaller than $h=8\AA$, we found a commensurability effect and an extraordinary decrease in the out-of-plane dielectric constant down to the limit of the dielectric constant of optical water. Spatial resolved polarization density data obtained from molecular dynamics simulations are found to be antisymmetric across the channel and are used as input in a mean-field model for the dielectric constant as a function of the height of the channel for $h>15\AA$. Our results are in excellent agreement with a recent experiment [L. Fumagalli et al., Science 360, 1339 (2018)].

• Received 8 September 2019
• Revised 3 March 2020
• Accepted 1 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.102.022803