Nonlinear Debye screening in strongly-coupled plasmas

Abstract

An ubiquitous property of plasmas is the so-called Debye shielding of the electrostatic potential. Important aspects of Debye screening concern, in particular, the investigation of non-linear charge screening effects taking place in strongly-coupled plasmas, that imply a reduction of the effective charge characterizing the Debye-Hückel potential. These effects are particularly relevant in dusty plasmas which are characterized by high-Z particles. The investigation of the effective interactions of these particles has attracted interest in recent years especially for numerical simulations. In this work we intend to analyze the consistency of the traditional mathematical model for the Debye screening. In particular, we intend to prove that the 3D Poisson equation involved in the DH model does not admit strong solutions. For this purpose a modified model is proposed which takes into account the effect of local plasma sheath (i.e., the local domain near test particles where the plasma must be considered discrete). Basic consequences of the model are discussed, which concern the asymptotic properties of the solutions determined both for weakly and strongly coupled plasmas. As an application the charge screening effect in strongly coupled plasmas is investigated and an explicit expression of the effective charge for the asymptotic DH potential is determined.