This document discusses Debye screening and quasineutral plasma. It defines a plasma as a quasineutral gas of charged and neutral particles that exhibits collective behavior. It explains that charged particles in a plasma can generate electric fields, and that these fields can affect the motion of other charged particles far away. The key points are:
- Debye screening refers to how a plasma can shield external electric fields applied to it over a characteristic distance called the Debye screening length.
- For a plasma to be considered quasineutral, the Debye screening length must be much smaller than the system dimensions, so that electric fields are shielded locally.
- The Debye screening length depends on factors like