Asymptotic analysis for superfocusing of the electric field in between two nearly touching metallic spheres

Abstract

We consider the enhancement of electric field in the presence of two perfectly conducting spheres. When the two spheres get closer, the electric field have a much larger magnitude compared to the external field in the small gap region between the two spheres. The enhanced field can be arbitrary large with the generic blow-up rate $|\epsilon\ln\epsilon|^{-1}$ in three dimensional space, where $\epsilon$ is the distance between the spheres. In this paper we derive rigorously an asymptotic formula of the electric field consisting of elementary functions. The asymptotic formula explicitly characterizes superfocusing of the electric field in terms of the spheres radii, the distance between the spheres, and the external field. We illustrate our results with numerical calculations.