Boundary effects for an electrostatic condenser (Q5941888)

The aim of the paper are condensers whose plates are two parallel arcs. For a sufficiently small distance \(\varepsilon >0\) of the plates the following asymptotic result for the capacity \(C\) of such a condenser has been proved. Theorem. For \(\varepsilon\to 0\), we have \(C={L\over 2 \varepsilon} +{1\over\pi} \log{1\over \varepsilon} +O(1)\), where \(O(1)\) is a bounded function of \(\varepsilon\) and \(L\) is the length of the arcs. A consequence of this is the following three-dimensional analogy \(C={F\over 2 \varepsilon} +{U\over 2\pi} \log{1\over \varepsilon}+ O(1)\), where \(F\) is the area and \(U\) is the perimeter of a sufficiently smooth simply connected two-dimensional surface. Two such parallel surfaces are taken as the plates of the condenser. The proof based on the construction of a special one-parameter family of curves, respectively one-parameter family of surfaces. In the very simple case that the condenser is given by two parallel disks an asymptotic result was obtained by R. Clausius and R. Kirchhoff in a more heuristic way.