Electric dipole moment

Electromagnetism

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The electric field due to a point dipole (upper left), a physical dipole of electric charges (upper right), a thin polarized sheet (lower left) or a plate capacitor (lower right). All generate the same field profile when the arrangement is infinitesimally small.
Common symbols	$p$
SI unit	coulomb-metre (C⋅m)
In SI base units	m⋅s⋅A
Dimension	LTI

The electric dipole moment is a measure of the separation of positive and negative electrical charges within a system: that is, a measure of the system's overall polarity. The SI unit for electric dipole moment is the coulomb-metre (C⋅m). The debye (D) is another unit of measurement used in atomic physics and chemistry.

Theoretically, an electric dipole is defined by the first-order term of the multipole expansion; it consists of two equal and opposite charges that are infinitesimally close together, although real dipoles have separated charge.