Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-2-paper-of-the-university-of-oxford/2014/10/4/solution

The phase describes propagation along . With , the vacuum plane electromagnetic wave has
Thus , , and . The field amplitudes are and , giving
The instantaneous magnitude ratio also equals wherever the fields are nonzero; at a node both vanish together. Their Poynting vector points along , checking the relative component signs.

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