Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-b-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2010/paper-2a/section-b/b6/solution

Let the unit normal point from layer 1 to layer 2. The electrostatic electric field boundary condition is , while Gauss's law for the electric displacement field gives . Here denotes absolute permittivity; replace it by if dielectric constants are relative.
In the steady conducting state, charge conservation makes the normal current density the same in both layers:
Writing , the steady fields in two leaky dielectric layers are
The signed interfacial free surface charge density is the jump of :
The total free-plus-bound sheet charge instead follows from the vacuum form of Gauss's law,
The bound contribution is . These are signed quantities for the chosen normal and voltage direction; their magnitudes are obtained by absolute values. They describe the long-time DC state, not the initial capacitive transient. Positive conductivities suffice for the derivation; if both vanish, conductivity alone does not determine the field division, which also depends on the initial free interfacial charge.

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