Debye and non-Debye relaxation

Abstract

Debye relaxation behaviour is unique in the sense that all memory of excitation is instantaneously lost. It is shown that the presence of higher-frequency relaxations for components of the same dipole degrades this property by extending the memory into the timescale of relaxation, thus giving a nonDebye behaviour which can be expected to occur in all practical dielectric materials. In this case it is not possible, as has been suggested, that knowledge of the polarisation or of the depolarisation current at a single time is sufficient, alone, to define the relaxation behaviour of the system for all subsequent times. Furthermore the Guo and Guo experiment (1983) is shown to be incapable of discriminating between this picture of sequential relaxation and the alternative possibility of an ensemble of independent relaxations.