Non conventional screening of the Coulomb interaction in low dimensional and finite size system

Abstract

We study the screening of the Coulomb interaction in non polar systems by polarizable atoms. We show that in low dimensions and small finite size systems this screening deviates strongly from that conventionally assumed. In fact in one dimension the short range interaction is strongly screened and the long range interaction is anti-screened thereby strongly reducing the gradient of the Coulomb interaction and therefore the correlation effects. We argue that this effect explains the success of mean field single particle theories for large molecules.