HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields

10.1
Magnetic Forces and Fields
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.2
Magnetic Flux
As with electric fields it is possible to visualise the magnetic
field in terms of field lines which are everywhere tangential
to the magnetic field B.
Magnetic field lines
for a current carrying
loop
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.3
Magnetic field lines have properties very similar to those of electric
field lines. The properties are:
1. The field lines form closed loops (or extend from - to +).
2. Field lines do not branch or cross (except maybe where the field
falls to zero).
3. The area density of the field lines is proportional to the magnetic
field.
One difference is that the field lines do not start and end on
magnetic charges. This is an experimental result: magnetic
monopoles are predicted by some grand unified theories but no true
elementary magnetic charges have ever been discovered.
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.4
Notwithstanding the differences it is still true that the natural
definition of the Magnetic Flux through a surface, S, has the
same form as for electric flux:
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.5
Gauss Law for B
Since magnetic field lines form closed loops, the interpretation of
flux in terms of number of field lines crossing a surface
suggests that the total magnetic flux through any closed surface is
zero.
This is, in fact, true, and forms the third of Maxwells equations:
For any closed surface S,
(10)
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.6
This plays a different role for B fields than the corresponding
law for E (or D) fields, because it tells us nothing about how
the field is generated, only that the field is constrained to obey
equation (10). In this it is like the conservation condition for E.
It is any easy exercise to derive the differential form of the law
(just repeat the arguments that led to Gauss law for E, with no
charge density). The result is
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.7
Amperes Law
The Biot-Savart law for a static magnetic field can be recast in a
more sophisticated form, called Amperes Law. The reason for
doing this is that this form of the law generalises more easily to
time-varying fields, in addition to allowing the calculation of fields
for some special current distributions that would be hard using the
Biot-Savart law directly.
Amperes law , together with Gauss laws for electric and
magnetic fields and the conservation condition for static electric
fields, form the complete set of Maxwells equations for static
fields.
Amperes law gives the circulation of the magnetic field, just as
the conservation condition gives the circulation of the electric
field. Consider the case of a long straight wire.
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.8
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.9
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.10
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.11
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.12
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.13
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.14
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.15
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.16
Density
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.17
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.18
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.19
A solenoid is a long cylindrical coil. (The word apparently
derives from the Greek solen meaning channel or pipe.) Its main
use is to provide a region of almost uniform magnetic field.
It can be thought of as a stack of current loops and, as for single
loops, the off axis field can be hard to calculate, For an
infinitely long solenoid with small diameter windings, however,
symmetry allows us to use Amperes law.
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.20
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.21
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.22
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.23
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.24
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.25
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.26
HET316 Electromagnetic Waves: Magnetic Fields
10.27