Take the divergence of the proposed Ampère's law. Since the divergence of a curl vanishes identically, it implies . However, local charge conservation requires the continuity equation
For example, electric current entering a charging capacitor accumulates electric charge on its plates, so the charge density is time dependent. The proposed equation cannot describe that process.
From Gauss's law, . Thus , which supplies precisely the missing divergence. Adding the displacement current density gives the Ampère-Maxwell equation:
Its divergence now yields the correct continuity equation. Through a fixed surface, the associated displacement current is , where is the electric flux. In a vacuum capacitor gap, this equals the conduction electric current charging the plates, even though no charges cross the gap. Charge conservation fixes the required divergence of the correction; by itself it does not exclude adding a further divergence-free vector field.