Roughness effects on the electrostatic-image potential near a dielectric interface

Abstract

In this work, we investigate roughness effects on the electrostatic-image potential of a point charge situated in the vicinity of a rough dielectric-vacuum interface. The roughness is modeled as a self-affine structure with root mean square roughness σ, correlation length ξ, and roughness exponent 0 10%) with respect to that of a flat interface, and its effect outside the dielectric medium is dominated mainly by the long-wavelength roughness parameters σ and ξ. However, inside the medium, the contribution of the roughness exponent H could become comparable to that of σ and ξ. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.