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The electric susceptibility χ_e of a dielectric material is a measure of how easily it polarizes in response to an electric field. This, in turn, determines the electric permittivity of the material and thus influences many other phenomena in that medium, from the capacitance of capacitors to the speed of light.

It is defined as the constant of proportionality (which may be a tensor) relating an electric field E to the induced dielectric polarization density P such that

where is the electric permittivity of free space.

The susceptibility of a medium is related to its relative permittivity by

So in the case of a vacuum,

The electric displacement D is related to the polarization density P by

In general, a material cannot polarize instantaneously in response to an applied field, and so the more general formulation as a function of time is

That is, the polarization is a convolution of the electric field at previous times with time-dependent susceptibility given by χ_e(Δt). The upper limit of this integral can be extended to infinity as well if one defines χ_e(Δt) = 0 for Δt < 0. An instantaneous response corresponds to Dirac delta function susceptibility χ_e(Δt) = δ(Δt).

It is more convenient in a linear system to take the Fourier transform and write this relationship as a function of frequency. Thanks to the convolution theorem, the integral disappears and one obtains

This frequency dependence of the susceptibility leads to frequency dependence of the permittivity, which is sometimes known as material dispersion.

Moreover, the fact that the polarization can only depend on the electric field at previous times (i.e. χ_e(Δt) = 0 for Δt < 0), a consequence of causality, imposes Kramers-Kronig constraints on the susceptibility χ_e(0).

• Application of tensor theory in physics
• Magnetic susceptibility
• Maxwell's equations
• Permittivity
• Clausius-Mossotti relation