In vacuum, displacement current contributes the additional term :
Taking the divergence and using Gauss law gives , the local conservation of charge. Without displacement current the curl equation would incorrectly require a divergence-free current even during charge accumulation.
For a charging capacitor, a surface cutting the wire carries conduction current while a surface passing through the gap carries changing electric flux. The displacement current term makes the circulation independent of the spanning surface. It is not transport of free charge across the vacuum gap. In matter the macroscopic equation is , with electric polarization included in . Together with Faraday's law of induction, the vacuum equations give electromagnetic waves of speed .
A current in one circuit links magnetic flux through another. It produces magnetic flux linkage through another. With fixed geometry and a linear reciprocal medium, choose consistent winding orientations and write
The shared coefficient is mutual inductance; reversal of one winding reverses its sign. Faraday's law of induction gives the mutual induced emf for fixed . The minus sign expresses Lenz's law.
The magnetic energy is
Nonnegative energy for every current pair requires , motivating the coupling coefficient . Transformers use strong common flux to exchange energy between circuits; leakage flux reduces coupling. A shared core increases linkage, but saturation, hysteresis and eddy-current losses limit the linear description. A moving geometry also contributes to the mutual emf.
Electromagnetic induction produces an electromotive force when magnetic flux linkage changes. For an oriented moving loop,
For a stationary loop this reduces to Faraday's law of induction, . Motion in a static field can instead supply the motional term. Lenz's law gives the minus sign: the induced electric current opposes the flux change, with the required electrical energy supplied by mechanical work or the field source.
For linear fixed-geometry circuits, flux linkages satisfy and . Self-inductance gives ; mutual inductance gives the additional term . Reciprocity gives the same mutual coefficient for both circuits, with its sign determined by winding orientation. The stored field energy is
The bound follows from nonnegative energy for arbitrary electric currents. In a linear medium the equivalent field expression is .
An ideal electrical transformer links both windings with one changing core flux, giving for corresponding voltage magnitudes. A loaded secondary drives an opposing magnetomotive force and increases primary electric current; ideally and input and output powers agree. A electrical transformer exchanges voltage for electric current, not for extra power. Real devices have winding resistance, leakage flux, eddy-current and hysteresis losses, and finite magnetizing electric current. A steady DC input gives no continuing secondary voltage after the switching transient and may cause excessive primary electric current or core saturation.
The varying magnetic flux through the ring induces an electromotive force by Faraday's law of induction. Its direction follows Lenz's law. With solenoid current , ring current , ring self-inductance , electrical resistance , and mutual inductance ,
The ring sits in a nonuniform magnetic field: coupling decreases above the solenoid, so and with a common orientation for the two windings. For , the in-phase part of the induced ring current is negative:
Thus alternating-current induction levitation can balance the ring's weight when . A falling mean lifting force with height supplies vertical stability. In the strongly inductive limit the two currents are almost opposite: the ring repels the solenoid during both half cycles. Finite self-inductance matters; an ideal purely resistive loop would carry a current exactly in quadrature with and give zero average force in this model. The source supplies the Joule heating in the real ring, and any mechanical work while it rises.
The differential form of Faraday's law of induction is
By Stokes theorem, for a stationary oriented circuit it becomes , where is magnetic flux and is electromotive force. Circuit orientation and surface normal obey the right-hand rule. Lenz's law is the physical meaning of the minus sign: the induced current's magnetic field opposes the change in linked magnetic flux. For a moving circuit, the force per unit electric charge is , and its line integral is the corresponding electromotive force. Motion through a static magnetic field can therefore induce a voltage even when .
Let be the wire's angle from the downward vertical, , and choose and upward, as in the figure. The motional term along the wire has radial component at cylindrical radius . In steady electrical equilibrium, integrating from the grounded axis to the bob gives
The Lorentz force on this positive electric charge is radially outward. Its ratio to the required centripetal term is , so the stated heavy-bob condition makes its effect on the zero-field conical pendulum geometry negligible. With wire tension , and , giving . Hence the magnetically charged conical pendulum has
A nonzero-radius orbit requires . Reversing the sense of rotation or the magnetic field reverses the sign of .
The response to the added electric field requires an electrical convention. In the usual mechanical approximation, treat the pre-existing electric charge as , include its upward electric force , and neglect all magnetic-force feedback. Then
This predicts an increased radius for . It is the result when the newly applied field is used only as a probe force on the original electric charge.
There is a first-order qualification if the bob remains electrically connected to the grounded pivot and the uniform added field's potential is included consistently. Put and set the external electric potential to zero at the pivot. The external potential at the bob is then , so the charging relation and full force balance become
The second equation follows by eliminating the wire tension between vertical balance and radial balance, including the outward magnetic Lorentz force. Expanding both equations to first order in , and to leading order in , with , gives
The extra factor arises from the added field changing by and therefore changing the radial magnetic force. That term is linear in too; the heavy-bob assumption alone does not justify retaining while dropping it. The two expressions refer to the two electrical approximations just specified. The expansion requires a small change relative to the initial radius and is nonuniform as that radius tends to zero.
For an electrical measurement, route the grounded connection through a sensitive electrometer operated near zero input voltage, and integrate the charging electric current when or is changed. Starting with the field off, the transferred electric charge is in this ideal capacitance model. Reversing separates the induced signal from offsets. Alternatively, isolate the charged bob briefly and measure its electric potential with a high-input-impedance electrometer, accounting for the instrument's extra capacitance and for the fact that isolation changes the electrical boundary condition.
Choose the guide axis as , with and . The electric field is along , parallel to the walls' dimension. Take a homogeneous lossless nonmagnetic dielectric with relative permittivity , ideal conducting walls, and time dependence . The lowest transverse electric mode of a rectangular waveguide is
At , this tangential electric field vanishes. At the electric field is normal to the wall; a nonzero value is supported by surface electric charge and violates no conducting boundary condition. The field has zero divergence. The associated normal magnetic field also vanishes at each wall, as verified below. The fundamental sine across the wider dimension minimizes the nonzero transverse wave number; is not a physical propagating mode of a hollow simply connected guide.
Below the waveguide cutoff frequency , put with to select decay for . The evanescent transverse electric mode in a rectangular waveguide then has
For the fixed frequency in the question,
The decay length increases monotonically and diverges as ; its formal limit at is . At the mode is at cutoff, with zero axial wave number. For , is real and the mode propagates without axial attenuation in this ideal lossless model. There is no real finite evanescent decay length to continue beyond cutoff. The paper's graph notation denotes the same as its preceding formula.
Figure 1.
Evanescent decay length and propagating axial wave number on opposite sides of cutoff
. Details.
From Faraday's law of induction, . Writing gives
Thus vanishes on the walls and vanishes on the walls, meeting the normal magnetic boundary conditions. The fields also satisfy . For real the physical fields are , , and .
The time-averaged Poynting vector is
All products are imaginary because the electric field and magnetic field are in quadrature. A single decaying evanescent wave stores reactive energy without transmitting average power into a semi-infinite lossless guide. A finite below-cutoff section can transmit power when both independent evanescent solutions are present; that is a different boundary-value problem.
The skin effect also gives exponential field decay, but in a good metal has both real and imaginary parts and there is a real inward mean Poynting vector. That flux supplies Joule heating . Here attenuation comes from geometric cutoff in a lossless region, with no conductivity and no dissipative power sink; exponential decay alone does not establish absorption.
Mutual inductance expresses how a changing electric current in one circuit induces an electromotive force in another. Choose winding orientations and define their linked magnetic fluxes by
For a reciprocal linear magnetic system, the same appears in both expressions. Faraday's law of induction gives when the secondary electric current does not itself change. The sign depends on winding orientation and is consistent with Lenz's law.
The stored magnetic energy is
Its nonnegativity for arbitrary electric currents requires . Strong coupling makes approach ; flux leakage makes it smaller.
An ideal electrical transformer has two windings linked by the same time-varying core magnetic flux. The induced winding voltages are proportional to their turn counts. For appropriately chosen terminal polarities,
The electric current convention in the power relation takes primary power into the device and secondary power out to the load. Consequently a load electrical impedance appears at the primary as . A larger secondary voltage therefore comes with a smaller available secondary electric current, rather than extra energy.
A steady direct electric current produces no sustained transformer action after its switching transient. Practical departures from the ideal include winding electrical resistance, leakage magnetic flux, finite magnetizing electric current, core saturation, eddy currents and magnetic hysteresis losses.
Field equations. In a homogeneous source-free nonmagnetic medium, and . Maxwell's equations become
The first equation follows from for spatially constant nonzero . When the effective relative permittivity is negative below, its charge response is already included in ; it must not also be counted as an extra free source.
Amplitude relations and bulk dispersion. Work with complex phasors proportional to . For , the Ampere-Maxwell law gives
so the amplitudes must obey
They are not arbitrary independent constants: the dispersion relation alone would not make arbitrary amplitudes satisfy the equations. These relations give , so the electric divergence vanishes; the magnetic divergence vanishes because there is no dependence. The only nonzero component of Faraday's law of induction is
Substitution then gives
This proves that all four field equations hold for the specified transverse magnetic polarization when both the amplitude relations and the dispersion relation are imposed.
Interface matching. Let region 1 be vacuum above the interface, with , ; region 2 has , . These signs make the evanescent fields decay as . In the absence of free surface current, tangential is continuous, giving a common interface amplitude. Tangential is also continuous, hence
Normal is continuous as well: both sides have . This does not require itself to be continuous; the material can have polarization surface charge. The normal magnetic field is zero on both sides.
Existence and surface dispersion. The opposite signs of and require . The two bulk equations are
Use to eliminate the decay constants. For the nontrivial interface branch,
A positive together with real propagating gives . A negative permittivity between and zero is insufficient. This lossless planar surface-plasmon dispersion describes a surface plasmon polariton; would instead be identical media and supplies no decaying bound mode.
Frequency range and long wavelengths. With , the existence condition becomes
The upper value is a limiting frequency approached as , not an attained maximum at finite . Substitution into the dispersion relation gives
For , choosing propagation in the positive direction,
It approaches the vacuum light line from larger . The vacuum decay constant is then , so confinement becomes weak at low frequency. This calculation assumes the stated real, lossless effective permittivity; dissipation would require complex propagation and decay constants.
Effective permittivity. Use peak phasors with time dependence . The Ampere-Maxwell law is
The conductive contribution to complex permittivity is therefore
Here is the source's effective relative permittivity, not just the real part of a complex response. The positive imaginary term is the loss sign appropriate to this time convention.
The penetrating electric wave. Combine this equation with Faraday's law of induction. In a uniform source-free medium the transverse phasor satisfies
For a good conductor of electrical conductivity , , so . The root which decays into is
Choose the surface phasor amplitude real. Taking the real part of gives
The skin depth is an amplitude-decay distance in metres.
The magnetic wave and phase. The curl of an -polarized field varying in is in the direction. Since ,
Thus
The phase sign follows the specified convention. Equivalently the surface impedance of a good conductor is .
How the fields differ from those in vacuum. The two metal fields have the same exponential envelope and spatial period , but their phase arguments differ by .
Figure 1.
Original normalized electric and magnetic field profiles inside a good conductor at one instant, showing their common decay envelope and quarter-of-a-right-angle phase difference
. Details.
An individual travelling wave in the lossless exterior has no attenuation, real wave impedance and in-phase electric and magnetic fields. The exterior total field also includes the reflected wave and may show interference, so it need not share that simple phase relation everywhere. At the interface the tangential fields match; is the field just inside the metal, not necessarily the incident amplitude. A good conductor reflects strongly and its wave impedance is much smaller than the vacuum impedance.
Average inward energy flux. For peak phasors, the Poynting vector averaged over a cycle is . The fields give
Consequently the constant in the question is
The flux is in the direction and has units .
Local energy conservation. The Poynting flux and local heating in a skin layer satisfy
The decrease becomes Joule heating in each layer. The Poynting theorem includes this transfer from field energy to the metal; averaged electromagnetic energy storage has zero time derivative in the periodic state, so no energy is lost from the complete balance.
Induction and its sign. The Maxwell-Faraday equation is . For a fixed loop, Stokes theorem gives
This is Faraday's law of induction. The orientation of the surface normal and positive circulation are linked by the right-hand rule. The minus sign is Lenz's law: the induced current's linked flux opposes the imposed flux change, rather than reinforcing it.
The inductive current. Let the loop normal make angle with the applied field, with positive current defined by that normal. The external magnetic flux is . With negligible electrical resistance, the circuit equation is , so total linked flux is constant. For zero initial trapped flux,
The printed result needs this initial-flux assumption; in general an additional constant current is allowed. The units are amperes because a weber divided by a henry is an ampere.
Current and forces at one instant. Take along and , so relative to the chosen normal. The loop magnetic dipole moment therefore has a component opposite the applied field. Each wire element experiences Lorentz force . Opposite sides have equal and opposite forces, giving zero net force in the uniform field but a nonzero couple.
Figure 1.
Original top view of the loop's vertical sides at positive applied field; dots and crosses show vertical current, and the force pair increases the angle between normal and field
. Details.
The horizontal top and bottom wire segments also experience equal and opposite vertical forces. They cancel without adding torque about the vertical rotation axis; the displayed force pair supplies that torque.
Average torque. Since , its generalized component for increasing is . Substitution gives
and, using ,
The orientation torque on a flux-conserving loop drives its normal away from the field for the stated initial angle. Its magnitude has units joules, or newton metres.
Free motion with large inertia. Write for the mechanical moment of inertia. If its orientation changes little during each field cycle, the slow equation is , with effective potential
The stable orientation is , where the loop plane contains the applied field. Released from rest between and , the loop accelerates toward that orientation, overshoots and librates around it. In the leading averaged, undamped model its turning angles are and . It does not settle without a dissipative mechanism. For small librations the squared angular frequency is .
Negligible inductance and finite resistance. Now the current is proportional to the induced electromotive force, not to the flux. Including slow rotation,
The rotational damping of a resistive loop in an oscillating field follows from
At fixed orientation, the first term alternates at and has zero mean. The loop can therefore rock slightly, but there is no leading mean aligning torque like that in the inductive case. Slow rotation gives
which opposes motion and produces Joule heating. Initial-phase transients can initiate motion, and the instantaneous torque is not zero. This description retains the large-inertia, slow-motion approximation; it does not assert an exact stationary solution at every starting angle.
Use the divergence identity for a cross product, followed by Faraday's law of induction and the Ampère-Maxwell equation:
With the electromagnetic energy density of part (b), these give
Integrate over a fixed volume and apply the divergence theorem, choosing outward:
This is Poynting's theorem. The outward electromagnetic energy flux equals minus the power transferred to matter and minus the rate at which electromagnetic energy accumulates inside. For the dissipative electrical conductor in this question, the matter term is Ohmic heating.
For a stationary closed circuit, Faraday's law of induction is
The loop orientation and magnetic-flux normal obey the right-hand convention. For a moving material circuit, the emf is instead , with the same negative derivative of the flux through the moving circuit. The additional magnetic force term accounts for motional emf.
Lenz's law expresses the minus sign physically: an induced current opposes the change in flux that produces it. It does not always oppose the field itself. Increasing positive flux drives a current producing negative flux; decreasing it reverses that response. A straight conducting rod of length l moving across a perpendicular uniform field has emf magnitude Blv. A resistive return circuit then develops a magnetic braking force, and the supplied mechanical power equals Joule heating in the ideal steady limit. This connects induction with conservation of energy. [ref]
Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force by changing magnetic flux or by moving a conductor through a magnetic field. With the loop and surface orientations related by the right-hand rule, Faraday's law of induction is
Here is the local wire velocity. For a stationary loop, the induced electric field can have a nonzero closed-path integral; its differential form is . For a straight rod moving perpendicularly to itself and to a uniform magnetic field, the motional electromotive force has magnitude .
The minus sign expresses Lenz's law: the induced electric current produces a magnetic field that opposes the change in linked magnetic flux. Pulling a conducting loop through a magnetic field therefore requires work against an electromagnetic resisting force; that work supplies the resulting heat or stored energy.
For an inductor with constant self-inductance, and its stored magnetic energy is . A changing electric current in one coil can induce an electromotive force in another through mutual inductance, the operating principle of a electrical transformer. These examples connect the flux law, the direction of the response and conservation of energy.
Faraday's law of induction relates an induced electromotive force to the rate of change of magnetic flux. Choose a positive orientation around a loop and its associated surface normal by the right-hand rule. For a stationary conducting loop,
Unlike an electrostatic field, the induced electric field generally has nonzero curl; the differential form is . For a moving circuit, magnetic flux transport for a moving circuit includes the magnetic Lorentz force on the charges:
where is the local wire velocity. Thus changing the field or moving a conductor can produce induction.
The minus sign is Lenz's law: an induced electric current, when a closed conducting path permits it, produces a magnetic field opposing the change of linked flux. It need not oppose the original field itself. For example, increasing flux through a loop produces a current tending to reduce that increase; decreasing the same flux reverses the current. The opposition is consistent with conservation of energy: external mechanical or electrical work is needed to maintain a change against its inductive reaction.
For a coil of turns, define the magnetic flux linkage , reducing to when every turn links the same flux. For fixed geometry and a linear magnetic response, self-inductance is defined by , and the coil's induced electromotive force is
The corresponding terminal voltage drop, with the passive sign convention, is . It opposes changes in electric current; it does not require the current itself to vanish.
Building the current from zero requires power . Integrating gives the energy stored by an ideal inductor:
This energy is stored in the magnetic field and can be returned when the current falls. In a series RL circuit driven by a constant voltage , Kirchhoff's voltage law gives . Starting with zero current, , with time constant . This makes the resistance to rapid current changes directly observable. Two coils also have mutual inductance: changing primary current induces secondary electromotive force with a polarity determined by the chosen winding orientations, the principle behind a transformer.
Choose a positive unit normal to the loop and choose positive circulation by the right-hand rule. Write the applied magnetic field as , where . Because the field is uniform, the external magnetic flux is
Faraday's law of induction gives the induced electromotive force, and Ohm's law gives the current through the loop's electrical resistance:
This is the induced current in a tilted resistive loop with the self-generated magnetic-flux contribution neglected as requested. The factor has units . A field parallel to the loop plane has and induces no current in this uniform-field model.
For , the initial normal flux is positive. At , the external magnetic field is instantaneously zero but its normal component is decreasing, so and . The current is counterclockwise when viewed from the positive-normal side. Its own magnetic field points along through the loop, preserving the initial normal flux in accordance with Lenz's law.
Figure 1.
Initial oblique field and the induced current a quarter-cycle later, for a positive initial normal flux
. Details.
For , both circulation and the induced normal-field direction reverse. The current follows the rate of change of magnetic flux; the quarter-cycle current is nonzero even though the external field itself vanishes then.
The regular hexagon has area . Choose with its positive normal parallel to the imposed field. The external magnetic flux is , so Faraday's law of induction gives
Taking the stated resistance to determine the loop response,
A different initial orientation adds a phase. The sign is with respect to the chosen loop orientation and obeys Lenz's law; reversal of that orientation reverses the signed current. This expression neglects self-inductance, as in the resistive-loop model.
For a fixed contour, Faraday's law of induction is
The second equation is the differential Maxwell equation, related to the first by Stokes theorem. For a moving wire, the relevant motional electromotive force is . Thus a static magnetic field can induce current in a moving circuit even when .
For translational magnetic damping of a square wire loop, while the upper horizontal leg remains in the field, a downward speed reduces the flux at rate . Hence , , and the upward magnetic braking force is . With negligible electrical self-inductance,
Let the wire cross-sectional area be , mass density , and resistivity . Since and ,
These use the printed copper values and . The wire dimensions cancel. The terminal-speed approximation is restricted to the interval before the upper leg leaves the field, as assumed in the question.
For rotational magnetic damping of a square wire loop, consider rotation about the central axis in a uniform field, the flux is . The induced current produces torque . A thin square loop has moment of inertia : the two legs parallel to contribute , and the other two . Averaging over a rotation gives
If “decay time” means rotational kinetic energy rather than angular speed, gives . This distinction, and the assumed separation between rotation period and slow decay, are essential. The electrical and mechanical time scales in magnetic braking must be separated: electrical self-inductance is neglected in both calculations.
Figure 1.
The falling-loop speed deficit decays three times more slowly than the rotating-loop angular speed
. Source. Details.
With Cartesian Minkowski spacetime coordinates , introduce the four-current and electromagnetic four-potential . The antisymmetric electromagnetic field tensor has components and . Maxwell equations become
The time and space components reproduce Gauss's law and the Ampère-Maxwell equation; the dual equation gives absence of magnetic monopoles and Faraday's law of induction. Antisymmetry gives charge conservation . The relativistic Lorentz force is . Every displayed equation transforms tensorially under a Lorentz transformation; the electric field and magnetic field are different components of the same object.
Two independent algebraic electromagnetic field invariants are
The second is a pseudoscalar: it is invariant under proper Lorentz transformations but changes sign under spatial reflection. For perpendicular fields, the sign of the first distinguishes a frame with purely magnetic field from one with purely electric field. Both invariants vanish for a plane electromagnetic wave with and , although the field itself is nonzero.
For a forward wave, the Faraday's law of induction fixes the relative amplitudes and signs:
Thus the two scalar amplitudes in the source cannot both be positive when the stated propagation direction and axes are used. The supplied product magnitude fixes only an overall amplitude in the chosen field units.
One convenient potential representative is
Indeed gives the electric field and gives the signed magnetic field above. Moreover , the Lorenz gauge condition. The potentials are not unique because residual gauge transformations may preserve this condition.
Since , the electromagnetic electromagnetic field invariants satisfy and away from field nodes. A boost along positive with speed gives
Here and . The wave becomes a static spatially varying magnetic pattern in this frame. This is possible because its medium wave four-vector is spacelike, ; it is not a vacuum-photon rest frame. The medium moves in the new frame, so its original rest-frame constitutive relation must not be reused there unchanged.
No inertial frame makes the magnetic field vanish throughout a nontrivial wave: that would turn the positive invariant into a nonpositive one. Both fields vanish at isolated nodes already, which is distinct from removing a field everywhere.
The persistent current in a superconducting loop experiment prepares a closed cold path, changes the externally linked magnetic flux, and follows the resulting superconducting persistent current through its magnetic field. The essential measurement starts after the inducing magnetic field has stopped changing.
Figure 1.
Preparing a closed superconducting loop and sensing its magnetic field with a compass
. Original schematic of field preparation and magnetic compensation. Shapes, winding counts and distances are illustrative. The magnetic compass senses a static magnetic field; it is not a stationary voltage-reading pickup coil. Details.
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's 1914 Communication 140c describes a lead coil closed by fused lead connections. Cooling in a magnetic field and removing the inducing magnet prepared the circulation. A magnetic compass sensed it without contacts; a separate copper coil, cooled in liquid air, supplied a measured balancing magnetic field. Reversing orientation and compensation reduced offsets. [ref]
The liquid-helium cryostat maintained low temperature, but refilling temporarily warmed the apparatus and changed the inferred electric current. A later run used a smaller initial electric current. Apparatus deformation and needle-zero drift limited comparison; cutting the closure still left a smaller magnetic signal, warning against assigning every signal to circulation around the whole loop. The report consequently gave an upper bound under a residual Ohm's law hypothesis. [ref]
For interpreting such a measurement, write a locally calibrated magnetic signal as
Here is the coupling and gain, while contains the background magnetic field and readout offset. Only after establishing stable and correcting does a ratio of signals determine a ratio of electric currents. A gradual change in geometry, a drifting background magnetic field, or a change of temperature can imitate or conceal a decay. A pickup coil connected only to a voltage meter obeys Faraday's law of induction and detects a changing linked magnetic flux; its zero steady output cannot demonstrate that the underlying static magnetic field has disappeared. A magnetic compass can respond to that static magnetic field.
Opening the path, reversing the preparation, and repeating with smaller initial electric current are useful controls for separating whole-loop circulation, magnetic background and a superconducting critical current. Keep the temperature and external magnetic field stable during the interval used to infer electrical resistance. A sudden reduction near a superconducting critical current is not evidence for the constant- exponential decay model at smaller electric current. Persistence also does not replace the Field-cooled Meissner experiment: transport around a hole and magnetic expulsion from the material test different properties.