How does permittivity affect electric field intensity?

1 Answer
Jun 1, 2015

Permittivity determines how an electric field affects or is affected my some material medium.

If the electric field in a space is E is vacuum and we put a a material medium with permittivity #epsilon# in that region, the electric field reduces by a factor of #epsilon/(epsilon""_0)# which is equal to the dielectric constant #K""_D# of the medium.

Due to presence of the material medium, the polarized field in the medium due to the electric field somewhat cancels it's effect and as a result the decrease in net electric field is observed.