Two uniform horizontal magnetic fields on either side of a horizontal interface exert no bulk force, but their magnetic pressures differ. For a common-temperature isothermal atmosphere with sound-speed squared and gravity , hydrostatic equilibrium gives and , . Continuity of magnetohydrodynamic total pressure gives the displayed density jump. A stronger field below means denser gas above, supplying a Rayleigh-Taylor instability even though each half-space is hydrostatic.
// Target: continuum-mechanics.bigb
Magnetic pseudomomentum 2026-10-31
For a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field, the symmetric gauge makes the displayed magnetic pseudomomentum a conserved quantity when no other position-dependent potential breaks translation symmetry. It differs from the kinetic momentum . With , Hamilton's equations for give and , proving conservation of and . The charge factor is necessary unless it has already been absorbed into the field convention. In quantum mechanics the transverse components need not commute, even though each commutes with this Hamiltonian operator; magnetic translation algebra records that distinction.
Magnetic relaxation Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
Magnetic relaxation converts magnetic energy into material motion through the Lorentz force density, and dissipates the resulting kinetic energy through viscosity. In a perfect conductor, magnetic flux freezing preserves field-line connectivity throughout every smooth stage. A regular limiting state has zero velocity and is a magnetostatic equilibrium, but its magnetic field can contain current sheets. Conservation of one global magnetic helicity is weaker than preservation of the complete frozen field-line structure.
Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography 2026-10-31
Magnetic reversal and domain averaging 2026-10-18
A full reversal leaves saturated isotropic magnetostrictive strain unchanged. A rotation generally changes it. In the simplest unconstrained orientation average over magnetic domains, replace by , not by . Equal populations pointing along and have zero net magnetization but the same preferred strain as a single domain along . An isotropic orientation distribution instead has and zero average preferred strain. Elastic compatibility between real magnetic domains can modify the macroscopic response.
Reversing an applied magnetic field does not guarantee that all microscopic orientations retrace the same path. Hysteresis, magnetic domain-wall pinning, and changes in domain populations can alter the measured curve. The reversal identity concerns the same pair of magnetic states with opposite local magnetization; it is not a universal prediction that an arbitrary experimental sweep is a single-valued even function of applied magnetic field.
Consider an original model at fixed vacuum wavelength and temperature . Stipulate a transparent sample with Verdet constant , length , uniform adjustable , and a field-independent analyzer-zero offset . These are chosen values, not measured glass properties. On a continuously tracked small-angle branch,Taking half the difference gives ; half the sum recovers . Hence . A field-reversal difference of is twice the single-field rotation, not that rotation itself. More generally this subtraction removes every contribution that is even under , provided the sample and apparatus remain otherwise matched.
An ideal polarimeter analyzer at laboratory angle reads normalized light intensity . Here is the light intensity immediately before the analyzer, separately calibrated for each condition. A scan locates the maximum at modulo . At , expansion about zero gives , with angles in radians. At crossed extinction, the response instead begins as and loses the sign near zero. The favorable slope follows directly by differentiating Malus's law; its sign reverses if the angular convention is reversed.
Magnetic rigidity Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Magnetic rigidity measures the resistance of a charged particle's momentum to bending by a magnetic field. The relativistic cyclotron orbit gives , where is the transverse gyroradius. For motion perpendicular to a uniform magnetic field, is the whole momentum. A measured magnetic rigidity fixes momentum per magnitude of electric charge; it does not by itself fix mass, kinetic energy, or the sign of the electric charge. This distinction makes the Anderson positron track experiment an especially revealing application of the Lorentz force.
Magnetic scalar potential Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-18
In a simply connected current-free region of constant magnetic permeability, Ampère's circuital law makes the magnetic field curl-free, so it admits a scalar potential. The absence of magnetic monopoles then gives Laplace's equation for that potential. Some conventions define the potential for instead of , differing by the constant permeability. Boundary conditions, including imposed fields at infinity, determine the potential up to an additive constant.
Magnetic second-moment tensor 2026-10-25
For a resolved magnetic field, the unaveraged tensor describes magnetic tension; the isotropic magnetic pressure is treated separately in the magnetohydrodynamic total pressure. Its spatial or ensemble average need not have matrix rank one. Statistical isotropy in three dimensions gives , by taking the trace. In Alfvén velocity units this tensor has dimensions of squared velocity.
Magnetic shielding 2026-10-18
Magnetic shielding reduces an unwanted magnetic field in a specified region. Residual fields and fields generated inside the shield still need to be assessed in a magnetometer experiment.
Magnetic skin layer 2026-10-14
A magnetic skin layer is the thin region penetrated by an oscillating magnetic field in a conductor. For locally tangential boundary amplitude , negligible material motion and variations along the boundary much slower than those across it, the resistive induction equation gives with time convention . The solenoidal magnetic-field constraint requires the smaller component to leading order. The tangential-field approximation therefore does not mean that the normal component is exactly zero at finite magnetic diffusivity.
Magnetic spectrometer 2026-10-18
A spectrometer that selects charged particles using the bending of their trajectories in a magnetic field. For a uniform magnetic field of magnitude , the perpendicular momentum component is , where is the electric charge and is the curvature radius of the projected trajectory.
For two incompressible streams of equal density with a common tangential magnetic field parallel to their velocities, decaying normal modes and interface displacement/total-pressure continuity give in units . The displayed dispersion relation follows, with . Thus excludes exponential Kelvin-Helmholtz instability; equality is marginal. Above threshold the growth rate is . The transverse horizontal wavenumber affects the decay length through but not this growth threshold. Magnetic tension supplies the stabilizing restoring force.
Magnetic subcriticality of a razor-thin disk 2026-10-06
For an isolated cold initially resting razor-thin disk, the displayed pointwise bound makes the absolute gravity-equivalent magnetic surface density smaller than its actual surface density. The positive-kernel comparison of thin-disk fields then makes the integrand in the horizontal virial balance of a cold magnetized fluid negative above and below the disk. Consequently its radial second moment begins to decrease. This establishes initial contraction in the global virial sense, not inward acceleration of every individual fluid element or unlimited subsequent collapse.
Magnetic sublevel 2026-10-18
One of the angular momentum eigenstates in a multiplet, distinguished by the magnetic quantum number along a chosen axis. An applied magnetic field can split their energy levels through Zeeman splitting.
Magnetic survey 2026-10-24
Measurement of a magnetic field over a region to locate contrasts in subsurface magnetization. Temporal background changes and cultural interference must be distinguished from spatial magnetic anomalies.
Magnetic susceptibility Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-13
Magnetic susceptibility describes how readily a magnetic field changes a material's magnetization. The field variable and normalization matter: volume magnetic susceptibility in the International System of Units is dimensionless, whereas a derivative of total magnetic moment with respect to has units of . A slope measured against the applied magnetic field intensity also depends on the sample's demagnetizing field.
For an isotropic, reversible linear response through the origin, writeHere is magnetization, or magnetic moment per volume; is the internal magnetic field intensity; is the internal magnetic flux density; and is the vacuum permeability. Both and have units . The magnetic permeability is . [ref]
Magnetic susceptibility and permeability. Richard Fitzpatrick, Magnetic susceptibility and permeability, equations (866)–(868): isotropic linear response and permeability
The independent-moment magnetic response below shows why one number cannot describe every field: magnetization approaches a saturation magnetization, while its differential magnetic susceptibility approaches zero. Anisotropy requires a magnetic susceptibility tensor; hysteresis requires specifying the preparation and sweep branch as well as the bias magnetic field, temperature, and timescale. The Gouy balance turns a small response into a measurable force without presuming that its readout is already the intrinsic volume magnetic susceptibility.
In ideal magnetohydrodynamics, a small displacement of a uniform magnetic field obeys . For , a horizontal Fourier mode proportional to with gives the displayed field and force perturbations. The linear magnetic pressure perturbation vanishes because . The remaining magnetic tension acts as a restoring spring, with Alfvén frequency .
Magnetic trapping of neutral atoms 2026-10-14
Magnetic turbulence 2026-10-25
Magnetic turbulence consists of irregular, fluctuating magnetic fields coupled to moving plasma. Scattering from these fluctuations can randomize a charged particle's direction in the local fluid frame and permit repeated shock wave crossings in diffusive shock acceleration.
