Discrepancy between Monte-Carlo Results and Analytic Values for the Average Excluded Volume of Rectangular Prisms

We perform Monte Carlo simulations to determine the average excluded volume <V_{ex}> of randomly oriented rectangular prisms, randomly oriented ellipsoids and randomly oriented capped cylinders in 3-D. There is agreement between the analytically obtained <V_{ex}> and the results of simulations for randomly oriented ellipsoids and randomly oriented capped cylinders. However, we find that the <V_{ex}> for randomly oriented prisms obtained from the simulations differs from the analytically obtained results. In particular, for cubes, the percentage difference is 3.92, far exceeding the bounds of statistical error in our simulation.{bf Added in Revision 2: We recently found the cause of the discrepancy between the simulation result and the analytic value of the excluded volume to be the effect of an error in our simulation code. Upon rectification of the simulation code, the simulation yields $ 11.00 pm 0.002 $ as the excluded volume of a pair of randomly oriented cubes of unit volume. The simulation also yields results as predicted by the analytic formula for all other cases of rectangular prisms that we study.}