If is the angle between the observation direction and , then
Integrating over solid angle uses and gives the total electric dipole radiation power.
In the radiation zone, both fields are transverse to and obey
The outward Poynting vector is
so its time average is
An absorbing shell receives the incident momentum rather than reversing it. Hence radiation pressure on a perfectly absorbing surface gives
At ,
and therefore
If is the angle between and , this is
Its spherical average is ; the vector force integrates to zero by the inversion symmetry of the electric dipole radiation pattern.
For a localized charge and current distribution, take the retarded vector potential
Let , , and . If the source size is much smaller than both and the characteristic radiation wavelength, the leading dipole term is
where the last identity follows from charge conservation.
Keeping only the terms in the radiation zone gives the transverse fields
The radial Poynting vector therefore yields
Using
or equivalently , we recover the electric dipole radiation formula
This requires a localized, nonrelativistic source of size , observation distance and , and neglect of higher multipoles and faster-decaying near fields.
For the pulsar, write its magnetic dipole moment as to distinguish it from the electric dipole above. The magnetic dipole radiation formula differs by a factor :
Here
and hence
On the slow spin-down timescale, energy conservation gives the magnetic-dipole spin-down equation
so
Half of the initial rotational energy remains when . Therefore
where . Since , the equivalent expression is