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Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
I would not
be surprised by a "nonlinear capacitor." Does it exist?
Sure. One important family is called "varactor".
http://www.google.com/search?q=varactor
e.g.
http://www.americanmicrosemi.com/tutorials/varactor.htm
http://www.tpub.com/neets/book11/45k.htm
It's a back-biased PN junction. Lightly doped.
The depletion region grows as the stored Q increases,
so the incremental capacitance dQ/dV goes down.
If you put it in a suitable circuit so you can adjust
the operating point, it makes a fine electronically-
adjustable capacitor. Useful as a tuning element.
You can also use it as an out-and-out nonlinear
element for mixers, parametric amplifiers, et cetera.
Since epsilon is likely to depend
of conditions, such as pressure or temperature
That wouldn't normally be considered a "nonlinear"
capacitor. Variable capacitor, maybe.