Fourth Moment of the Charge Density Induced Around a Guest Charge in Two-Dimensional Jellium

Abstract

The model under consideration is the classical two-dimensional one-component plasma (jellium) of pointlike particles with charge $e$, interacting pairwisely via the logarithmic Coulomb potential and immersed in a uniform neutralizing background charge density. The system is in thermal equilibrium at the inverse temperature $\beta$, its thermodynamics depends only on the coupling constant $\Gamma=\beta e^2$. We put into an infinite (homogeneous and translationally invariant) plasma a guest particle of charge $Ze$ with $Z>-2/\Gamma$ in order to prevent from the collapse of the jellium charges onto it. The guest particle induces a screening cloud (the excess charge density) in the plasma. The zeroth and second moments of this screening cloud were derived previously for any fluid value of $\Gamma$. In this paper, we propose a formula for the fourth moment of the screening cloud. The derivation is based on the assumption that the fourth moment is, similarly as the second moment, analytic in $Z$ around $Z=0$. An exact treatment of the limit $Z\to\infty$ shows that it is a finite (cube) polynomial in $Z$. The $\Gamma$-dependence of the polynomial coefficients is determined uniquely by considering the limits $Z\to 0$ and $Z\to\infty$, and the compressibility sum rule for $Z=1$. The formula for the fourth moment of screening cloud is checked in the leading and first correction orders of the Debye-H\"uckel limit $\Gamma\to 0$ and at the exactly solvable free-fermion point $\Gamma=2$. Sufficient conditions for sign oscillations of the induced charge density which follow from the second-moment and fourth-moment sum rules are discussed.