Debye relaxation

Debye relaxation is the dielectric relaxation response of an ideal, noninteracting population of dipoles to an alternating external electric field. It is usually expressed in the complex permittivity $varepsilon$ of a medium as a function of the field's frequency $omega$:

:$hat\{varepsilon\}(omega)\; =\; varepsilon\_\{infty\}\; +\; frac\{Deltavarepsilon\}\{1+iomega\; au\},$

where $varepsilon\_\{infty\}$ is the permittivity at the high frequency limit, $Deltavarepsilon\; =\; varepsilon\_\{s\}-varepsilon\_\{infty\}$ where $varepsilon\_\{s\}$ is the static, low frequency permittivity, and $au$ is the characteristic relaxation time of the medium.

This relaxation model was named after the chemist Peter Debye.

Variants of the Debye equation

* Cole-Cole equation
* Cole-Davidson equation
* Havriliak-Negami relaxation

See also

* Dielectric relaxation
* Dielectric spectroscopy