A Collective Description of Electron Interactions: II. CollectivevsIndividual Particle Aspects of the Interactions

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Abstract
The behavior of the electrons in a dense electron gas is analyzed in terms of their density fluctuations. These density fluctuations may be split into two components. One component is associated with the organized oscillation of the system as a whole, the so-called "plasma" oscillation. The other is associated with the random thermal motion of the individual electrons and shows no collective behavior. It represents a collection of individual electrons surrounded by comoving clouds of charge which screen the electron fields within a distance of the order of magnitude of the Debye length. This split up of the density fluctuations corresponds to an effective separation of the Coulomb interaction into long-range and short-range parts; the separation occurs at roughly the Debye length.