Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-optics-and-electrodynamics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/section-b/6/e/solution

The information in the original question is insufficient to determine a unique spin-induced change of charge density. It specifies ideal dielectric filaments with a prescribed excess linear charge density, but not the charge carrier species, their spin state, charge carrier mobility, binding potential or relaxation mechanism. A classical line charge has no spin variable at all. The following conditional conclusions are supported by the fields already calculated.
For a carrier moving with its filament, the local magnetic field in its instantaneous rest frame is, for the transverse fields here,
where is that carrier's laboratory velocity. Exclude its filament's singular self-field and first retain only the prescribed straight convective motion.
In Case 1 there is a common rest frame in which both filaments and the excess charges are stationary and the interfilament magnetic field vanishes. Equivalently, in the laboratory , so B's co-moving charges have . Thus uniform common translation alone creates no extra mutual rest-field spin splitting. This does not exclude intrinsic spin-orbit coupling of electrons moving within their atomic binding potentials; that material physics was never specified.
In Case 2 there is relative motion and no frame in which both source distributions are stationary. Put as in part (c). At the respective filament axes, the external fields experienced in each carrier distribution's own rest frame are
For the first expression B is at rest in ; for the second A is at rest in and the field comes from B moving at . For a carrier with magnetic dipole moment , the interaction distinguishes opposite transverse spin orientations. A field gradient could exert a spin-dependent force on mobile carriers; spin relaxation could instead produce a spin polarization. These are possible responses, not consequences of charge density alone. In B's frame the displayed interaction is directly a magnetic-moment coupling to the moving source's field; treating the moving carrier's electrostatic orbital term in another frame also requires consistent binding and acceleration dynamics, including any applicable Thomas precession.
For example, if and mobile electron spins can relax, the lower magnetic-energy orientation has the electron's magnetic moment toward and its spin toward . Oppositely oriented moments would experience opposite gradient forces. The sign changes if the source charge changes sign. None of these statements fixes a net charge redistribution without a confinement and response model, and the stipulated zero transverse size supplies no resolved “sides” on which charge could accumulate.
Therefore Case 1 has no new mutual spin effect from common bulk motion alone; Case 2 permits motion-induced spin-dependent interactions, but neither case determines an additional charge-density profile from the supplied data. In particular, the factor relating proper and laboratory linear charge densities in part (b) follows from length contraction and is not an effect of spin-orbit coupling. If the charges remain pinned in an ideal dielectric, their imposed density remains the prescribed density in either case.

New to topics? Read the docs here!