Aspects of One-Dimensional Coulomb Gases

In this short review, we discuss recent advances in exact solutions of models based on a one- dimensional (1D) Coulomb gas by means of field-theoretic functional integral methods. The exact solutions can be used to assess the accuracy of various approximations such as the weak coupling Poisson-Boltzmann theory as well as the strong coupling theory of Coulomb gases. We consider three different 1D models: the Coulomb fluid configuration in the case of the soap film model consisting of positively and negatively charged particles between adsorbing boundaries, counterions between two charged surfaces, and an ionic liquid lattice capacitor with positively and negatively charged particles on a lattice between one positive and one negative bounding surface.
Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in "Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter" edited by J. Dobnikar D.S. Dean, A. Naji and R. Podgornik (Pan Stanford Publishing)