Charge Fluctuations in the Two-Dimensional One-Component Plasma

Abstract

We study, via computer simulations, the fluctuations in the net electric charge, in a two dimensional one component plasma (OCP) with uniform background charge density $-e \rho$, in a region $\Lambda$ inside a much larger overall neutral system. Setting $e=1$ this is the same as the fluctuations in $N_\Lambda$, the number of mobile particles of charge $e$. As expected the distribution of $ N_\Lambda$ has, for large $\Lambda$, a Gaussian form with a variance which grows only as $\hat \kappa |\partial \Lambda|$, where $|\partial \Lambda|$ is the length of the perimeter of $\Lambda$. The properties of this system depend only on the coupling parameter $\Gamma = kT$ which is the same as the reciprocal temperature in our units. Our simulations show that when the coupling parameter $\Gamma$ increases, $\hat \kappa(\Gamma)$ decreases to an asymptotic value $\hat \kappa(\infty) \sim \hat \kappa(2)/2$ which is equal (or very close) to that obtained for the corresponding variance of particles on a rigid triangular lattice. Thus, for large $\Gamma$, the characteristic length $\xi_L = 2\hat \kappa/\rho$ associated with charge fluctuations behaves very differently from that of the Debye length, $\xi_D \sim 1/\sqrt \Gamma$, which it approaches as $\Gamma \to 0$. The pair correlation function of the OCP is also studied.