Radiative spin-down of a rotating electric dipole
ID: radiative-spin-down-of-a-rotating-electric-dipole
Radiative spin-down of a rotating electric dipole by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
A permanent electric dipole moment of magnitude rotating perpendicular to a fixed axis emits in the electric-dipole approximation for radiation, with . For fixed mechanical moment of inertia , weak radiative loss gives and hence the displayed spin-down law. It assumes : the full dipole acceleration has squared magnitude , whose second term is beyond this leading adiabatic approximation.
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