A many‐body model of dielectric polarisation in solids. I. Experimental data and existing interpretations

A detailed survey of the dielectric properties of a wide range of solids shows that their response functions in frequency or in time depart strongly from the Debye response and fall into a remarkably common or ‘universal’ pattern. The frequency response is similar for systems with permanent dipoles and with hopping charge carriers of electronic or ionic nature. It is also largely independent of the type of physical structure and chemical bonding in the materials. The existing approaches to the interpretation of this behaviour are shown to suffer from two basic drawbacks: they have to make rather arbitrary assumptions and they are unable to explain the essential similarity of the behaviour of many very different systems.