Debye Length (debye + length)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Dispersion of Dust Acoustic Modes and Perturbations of Plasma Flux Balance

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PLASMA PHYSICS, Issue 3 2007
V. Tsytovich
Abstract Previous considerations of dust acoustic waves is demonstrated to be inconsistent - the required equilibrium state for perturbations was not defined since balance of plasma fluxes was neglecting. The self-consistent treatment shows that plasma flux perturbations are accompanying any collective waves propagating in dusty plasmas and can play an important role in wave dispersion, wave damping and can create instabilities. This is illustrated by the derivation of dispersion relation for dust acoustic modes taking into account the plasma flux balances and plasma flux perturbations by waves. The result of this approach shows that the dust acoustic waves with linear dependence of wave frequency on the wave number exist only in restricted range of the wave numbers. Only for wave numbers larger than some critical wave number for low frequency modes the frequency can be have approximately a linear dependence on wave number and can be called as dust acoustic wave but the phase velocity of these waves is different from that which can be obtained neglecting the flux balance and depends on grain charge variations which are determined by the balance of fluxes. The presence of plasma fluxes previously neglected is the main typical feature of dusty plasmas. The dispersion relation in the range of small wave numbers is found to be mainly determined by the change of the plasma fluxes and is quite different from that of dust acoustic type, namely it is found to have the same form as the well known dispersion relation for the gravitational instability. This result proves in general way the existence of the collective grain attractions of negatively charged grains for for large distances between them and for any source of ionization. The attraction of grains found from dispersion relation of the dust acoustic branch coincides with that found previously for pair grain interactions using some models for the ionization source. For the existing experiments the effective Jeans length for such attraction is estimated to be about 8 , 10 times larger than the ion Debye length and the effective gravitational constant for the grain attraction is estimated to be several orders of magnitude larger than the usual gravitational constant. The grain attraction at large inter-grain distances described by the gravitationlike grain instability is considered as the simplest explanation for observed dust cloud clustering, formation of dust structures including the plasma crystals. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source]


Chemical-to-Electrical-Signal Transduction Synchronized with Smart Gel Volume Phase Transition

ADVANCED MATERIALS, Issue 43 2009
Akira Matsumoto
A stimulus-responsive polymer gel designed on a field-effect transistor gate undergoes a reversible volume phase transition in response to a specific biomolecule. An abrupt permittivity change at the gel/gate interface during the transition gives rise to a chemical to electrical signal conversion; the signal is thus detectable via a transistor without the limit of the Debye length. [source]


Distance dependence and salt sensitivity of pairwise, coulombic interactions in a protein

PROTEIN SCIENCE, Issue 5 2002
Kelly K. Lee
Abstract Histidine pKa values were measured in charge-reversal (K78E, K97E, K127E, and K97E/K127E) and charge-neutralization (E10A, E101A, and R35A) mutants of staphylococcal nuclease (SNase) by 1H-NMR spectroscopy. Energies of interaction between pairs of charges (,Gij) were obtained from the shifts in pKa values relative to wild-type values. The data describe the distance dependence and salt sensitivity of pairwise coulombic interactions. Calculations with a continuum electrostatics method captured the experimental ,Gij when static structures were used and when the protein interior was treated empirically with a dielectric constant of 20. The ,Gij when rij , 10 Å were exaggerated slightly in the calculations. Coulomb's law with a dielectric constant near 80 and a Debye-Hückel term to account for screening by the ionic strength reproduced the salt sensitivity and distance dependence of ,Gij as well as the structure-based method. In their interactions with each other, surface charges behave as if immersed in water; the Debye length describes realistically the distance where interactions become negligible at a given ionic strength. On average, charges separated by distances (rij) ,5 Å interacted with ,Gij , 0.6 kcal/mole in 0.01 M KCl, but ,Gij decayed to ,0.10 kcal/mole when rij = 20 Å. In 0.10 M KCl, ,Gij , 0.10 kcal/mole when rij = 10 Å. In 1.5 M KCl, only short-range interactions with rij , 5 Å persisted. Although at physiological ionic strengths the interactions between charges separated by more than 10 Å are extremely weak, in situations where charge imbalance exists many weak interactions can cumulatively produce substantial effects. [source]


Bound D-states of helium atom under Debye screening

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 2 2007
Sabyasachi Kar
Abstract We have investigated the 1snd1,3D (3 , n , 7) state energies of helium atom embedded in weakly coupled plasma environments using the Rayleigh,Ritz variational method. The effect of the plasma environment is taken care of using a Debye screening model. A correlated wave function involving exponential expansion has been used to represent correlation between the charge particles. The bound 1snd1,3D (3 , n , 7) state energies of helium for various Debye lengths along with the excitation energies of few singlet and triplet states are reported. Our results are useful references to atomic physics, plasma physics, and astrophysics research communities. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2007 [source]