Shielding of a moving test charge in a quantum plasma

Abstract

The linearized potential of a moving test charge in a one-component fully degenerate fermion plasma is studied using the Lindhard dielectric function. The motion is found to greatly enhance the Friedel oscillations behind the charge, especially for velocities larger than a half of the Fermi velocity, in which case the asymptotic behavior of their amplitude changes from 1/r^3 to 1/r^2.5. In the absence of the quantum recoil (tunneling) the potential reduces to a form similar to that in a classical Maxwellian plasma, with a difference being that the plasma oscillations behind the charge at velocities larger than the Fermi velocity are not Landau-damped.

9 pages, 11 figures. v3: Fixed typo, updated abstract

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum plasma effects in the classical regime
• Autoresonant control of the many-electron dynamics in nonparabolic quantum wells
• Effect of ionization/recombination processes on the electrical interactions between positively charged particles in highly collisional plasmas
• Dispersion in a relativistic degenerate electron gas