Debye length

In plasmas and electrolytes, the Debye length (Debye radius or Debye–Hückel screening length), is a measure of a charge carrier's net electrostatic effect in a solution and how far its electrostatic effect persists. With each Debye length the charges are increasingly electrically screened and the electric potential decreases in magnitude by 1/e. A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius is the Debye length. Debye length is an important parameter in plasma physics, electrolytes, and colloids (DLVO theory). The corresponding Debye screening wave vector for particles of density , charge at a temperature is given by in Gaussian units. Expressions in MKS units will be given below. The analogous quantities at very low temperatures () are known as the Thomas–Fermi length and the Thomas–Fermi wave vector. They are of interest in describing the behaviour of electrons in metals at room temperature. The Debye length is named after the Dutch-American physicist and chemist Peter Debye (1884-1966), a Nobel laureate in Chemistry. The Debye length arises naturally in the thermodynamic description of large systems of mobile charges. In a system of different species of charges, the -th species carries charge and has concentration at position . According to the so-called "primitive model", these charges are distributed in a continuous medium that is characterized only by its relative static permittivity, . This distribution of charges within this medium gives rise to an electric potential that satisfies Poisson's equation: where , is the electric constant, and is a charge density external (logically, not spatially) to the medium. The mobile charges not only contribute in establishing but also move in response to the associated Coulomb force, . If we further assume the system to be in thermodynamic equilibrium with a heat bath at absolute temperature , then the concentrations of discrete charges, , may be considered to be thermodynamic (ensemble) averages and the associated electric potential to be a thermodynamic mean field.