Debye Length in A Plasma
In a plasma, the background medium may be treated as the vacuum, and the Debye length is
where
- λD is the Debye length,
- ε0 is the permittivity of free space,
- kB is the Boltzmann constant,
- qe is the charge of an electron,
- Te and Ti are the temperatures of the electrons and ions, respectively,
- ne is the density of electrons,
- nij is the density of atomic species i, with positive ionic charge jqe
The ion term is often dropped, giving
although this is only valid when the mobility of ions is negligible compared to the process's timescale.
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