Radiation cuts and receiving polarization
ID: past-exam-of-the-optics-and-electrodynamics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/section-b/b3/radiation-cuts-and-receiving-polarization
Past exam of the optics and electrodynamics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Section B B3 Radiation cuts and receiving polarization by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
The outgoing radiation field has magnitude and . The radial Poynting vector, averaged over one cycle, givesThus the cut has a two-lobed shape, with zeros along and maxima along . In the plane, throughout and the cut is a circle: there is no azimuthal dependence. At fixed direction the flux falls as , while power per solid angle is independent of observation radius.
As a receiver for propagation along , the antenna responds to the incident electric field component along . For linear polarization at angle to , the available load power is proportional to : it is maximal for polarization and zero for polarization. Equal incident intensity in circular polarization gives half the matched-linear power. This polarization response follows from the induced voltage's projection along the dipole axis.
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