<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id>1870-3542</journal-id>
<journal-title><![CDATA[Revista mexicana de física E]]></journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title><![CDATA[Rev. mex. fís. E]]></abbrev-journal-title>
<issn>1870-3542</issn>
<publisher>
<publisher-name><![CDATA[Sociedad Mexicana de Física]]></publisher-name>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id>S1870-35422017000100063</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[On the accuracy of the Debye shielding model]]></article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<name>
<surname><![CDATA[Martínez-Fuentes]]></surname>
<given-names><![CDATA[M.A.]]></given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="Aff"/>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<name>
<surname><![CDATA[Herrera-Velázquez]]></surname>
<given-names><![CDATA[J.J.E.]]></given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="Aff"/>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>
<aff id="Af1">
<institution><![CDATA[,Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares ]]></institution>
<addr-line><![CDATA[México ]]></addr-line>
<country>Mexico</country>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="pub">
<day>00</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2017</year>
</pub-date>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>00</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2017</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>63</volume>
<numero>1</numero>
<fpage>63</fpage>
<lpage>67</lpage>
<copyright-statement/>
<copyright-year/>
<self-uri xlink:href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&amp;pid=S1870-35422017000100063&amp;lng=en&amp;nrm=iso"></self-uri><self-uri xlink:href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&amp;pid=S1870-35422017000100063&amp;lng=en&amp;nrm=iso"></self-uri><self-uri xlink:href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_pdf&amp;pid=S1870-35422017000100063&amp;lng=en&amp;nrm=iso"></self-uri><abstract abstract-type="short" xml:lang="en"><p><![CDATA[The expression for the Debye shielding in plasma physics is usually derived under the assumptions that the plasma particles are weakly coupled, so that their total kinetic energy is much greater than their electrostatic interaction energy, and that the velocity distributions of the plasma species are Maxwellian. The first assumption also establishes that the number of particles within a sphere with a Debye radius, known as the plasma parameter ND, should be significantly greater than 1, and determines the difference between weakly and strongly coupled plasmas. Under such assumptions, Poisson&#8217;s equation can be linearized, and a simple analytic expression is obtained for the electrostatic potential. However, textbooks rarely discuss the accuracy of this approximation. In this work we compare the linearized solution with a more precise numerical (or &#8220;exact&#8221;) solution, and show that the linearization, which underestimates the &#8220;exact&#8221; solution, is reasonably good even for ND &#8764; 40. We give quantitative criteria to set the limit of the approximation when the number of particles is very small, or the distance to the test charge too short.]]></p></abstract>
<kwd-group>
<kwd lng="en"><![CDATA[Plasma physics]]></kwd>
<kwd lng="en"><![CDATA[debye shielding]]></kwd>
<kwd lng="en"><![CDATA[electrostatics]]></kwd>
</kwd-group>
</article-meta>
</front><back>
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