Current dipole 2026-10-14
A current dipole idealizes a localized impressed electric current density by the displayed Dirac delta function distribution. Its moment has units of current times length. In a homogeneous volume conductor of conductivity , its primary electric potential is .
Dipole line-integral identity 2026-10-14
Here , and . The identity holds where the segment of source points , , avoids the observation point and the denominator is nonzero. Differentiating the right side with respect to gives the integrand and its value at is zero. Dotting with a current dipole moment evaluates a continuous line of dipole electric potentials.
Geselowitz formula 2026-10-14
For a homogeneous volume conductor with an insulating boundary , the Geselowitz formula expresses the exterior magnetic field as the primary Biot-Savart law field minus a surface contribution from the induced electric potential. For a current dipole, . On a spherical boundary, is parallel to , so the surface term has zero radial component at the observation point.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 76 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , , and . Initially assume and a nonzero current dipole. The possible singularities of the continued formulas occur when , orBy the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, . Away from the two endpoints it vanishes exactly when is antiparallel to , namely on the open segment , . Thus both formulas are regular in the physical exterior ; the singularities requested here belong to their analytic expressions continued into the sphere.
To determine the order on the segment, let and approach an interior point as , with and a unit transverse direction. Expansion givesConsequently the leading singular terms in the electric potential and magnetic scalar potential areThus a dipole with a nonzero transverse moment has first-order line singularities on the open segment: their generic growth is , the inverse distance to that segment. Angular coefficients can vanish along particular approach directions without removing the line singularity.
At the source point put with a fixed direction . The explicit dipole term givesThe source therefore has a second-order electric dipole singularity and, for a nonradial moment, a first-order magnetic singularity. Approaches tangent to the singular segment need not have these fixed-angle scalings.
At the origin put , with . The leading terms areThe electric expression has a first-order point singularity there. The magnetic expression has a generally direction-dependent finite radial limit, so the origin is a nonremovable endpoint singularity of radial order zero, rather than an isolated pole. It can still be unbounded along approaches whose angle to the segment also tends to zero. Stating the approach matters for this nonisolated singularity.
For a radial current dipole, , the transverse line terms cancel and the electric line singularity is removable. Its only electric singularities are the first-order term at the origin and the second-order dipole at . The magnetic potential is identically zero because . Finally, if , the two terms in the given exterior electric expression combine toThere is then just a second-order electric singularity at the origin. A zero dipole moment makes both potentials zero.
Spherical Neumann dipole images Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-10-18
For a current dipole in a homogeneous insulating sphere of radius , let and let be its primary electric potential. The displayed representation solves the interior Neumann boundary condition up to an additive constant. It rewrites the spherical Kelvin transform correction and a distributed dipole correction using the dipole line-integral identity. The image parameters depend on the observation radius; this is an exact parametrized representation rather than a fixed collection of image source positions.