Electrostatic repulsion between a uncharged or slightly charged conductor and a point charge

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through numerical and analytical methods that uncharged or slightly charged conductors can experience electrostatic repulsion from a point charge, especially when a cavity is present, revealing a counterintuitive electrostatic phenomenon.

Contribution

The study provides the first numerical and analytical evidence of electrostatic repulsion between neutral conductors and point charges, highlighting the significance of cavities in such effects.

Findings

Numerical calculations confirm repulsion effect in symmetric systems.

Presence of a cavity in the conductor is crucial for repulsion.

Analytical model explains the effect via induced charge positions.

Abstract

A counterintuitive effect of a repulsion between uncharged and charged conductors is considered. Our numerical calculations prove this effect for various axially symmetric systems of a neutral conductor in an electric field of a point charge. The presence of a cavity in the conductor is very important for the repulsion effect. Our simple analytical model explains this effect in terms of specific spatial positions of induced charges.