Debye Plasma Shielding

In a plasma, the mobility of charge carriers allows them to rearrange in response to electric fields. When a test charge is introduced, the surrounding plasma particles cluster around it (attracting opposites, repelling likes) to screen its electrostatic field. The characteristic distance over which this screening occurs is called the Debye length, λ_D.

Native experiment

Open Debye Plasma Shielding to interactively explore these parameters. Use these exact labelled controls to observe the Debye length and the screened potential attenuation.

1. Set Density units to 1, Temperature eV to 1, and Radius in Debye lengths to 1. Check that the Debye length is 7.433941994700463 μm and the particle count is 1720.8622730419295. The potential is attenuated by a factor of 0.36787944117144233 relative to the vacuum potential.
2. Increase Density units to 10. The increased density shrinks the Debye length to 2.350818869682884 μm and reduces the Debye sphere particle count to 544.1844322267074. The relative attenuation at 1 Debye length remains the same.
3. Set Density units back to 1 and increase Temperature eV to 10. Set Radius in Debye lengths to 2. The Debye length expands significantly to 23.508188696828835 μm due to higher thermal mobility, and the Debye sphere count increases to 54418.44322267072.
4. Set Radius in Debye lengths to 0. The attenuation ratio approaches 1, but the point potential diverges, so the scaled screened potential is shown as "Unavailable".
5. Set Radius in Debye lengths to 4. Notice the strong exponential attenuation far outside the Debye sphere, dropping to 0.01831563888873418.