Quantum Coulomb screening in the vicinity of a wall

Abstract
The static position correlation in a quantum Coulomb plasma is studied at large distances in the vicinity of a wall. Three kinds of walls are considered : a wall without electrostatic properties, a dielectric, and a conductor. At large separations y along the wall, the correlation exactly decays as 1/y³, though no algebraic tail exists for classical charges near a conductor. This tail originates from thermal statistical and intrinsic quantum fluctuations of screening clouds which are deformed by geometric constraint due to the wall and by the charges induced by influence inside a wall with electrical properties. The coefficient of the 1/y³ tail can be calculated explicitly in a weak-coupling and low-degeneracy limit. Then, classical, diffraction and purely quantum contributions are disentangled.