Screening of ionic cores in partially ionized plasmas within linear response

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2010 Jun;81(6 Pt 2):065401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.81.065401. Epub 2010 Jun 22.

Abstract

We employ a pseudopotential approach to investigate the screening of ionic cores in partially ionized plasmas. Here, the effect of the tightly bound electrons is condensed into an effective potential between the (free) valence electrons and the ionic cores. Even for weak electron-ion coupling, the corresponding screening clouds show strong modifications from the Debye result for elements heavier than helium. Modifications of the theoretically predicted x-ray scattering signal and implications on measurements are discussed.