Electron clouds around charged particulates

Abstract

Poisson’s equation is used to derive an expression for the characteristics of the Debye electron cloud around a multiply charged particle. It is shown that the limiting dimension of the Debye cloud (for an infinitely large charge of the particles) varies from 0.7 to 2.2 Debye radii, depending on the geometry of the problem. A first-principles modeling of the dynamics of many electrons moving around an immobile charged center is carried out. It is shown that a metastable state which relaxes at least one thousand times more slowly than would follow from the kinetic theory is established. Calculations show that in this metastable state (which is far from thermodynamic equilibrium) there is a detailed balance of electron transitions from a state with one energy to another. The distribution of electrons over kinetic energy has a Maxwellian form, while the distribution over total energy is radically different from the Boltzmann distribution and is close to that which was established previously by the authors for a plasma of singly charged ions. The potential distribution around the immobile charge in the metastable plasma is obtained.