A non-ideal amplifier is not specified by infinite input impedance alone: its open-loop gain and output impedance must also be modeled. Take its internal controlled output to be , where is the inverting-input potential, and place a resistance between and the actual output . The non-inverting input remains grounded; assume no external load. This gives an explicit finite-gain operational-amplifier integrator model.
Figure 1.
Non-ideal integrator model and its gain and phase for a specified dominant-pole amplifier
. Details.
Writing Kirchhoff's current law at the input and output nodes gives
The second equation gives . Substitution in the first gives the general transfer function
For sinusoidal phasors, set . The numerator and denominator are complex, so the magnitude gives the amplitude ratio and their arguments give the relative phase.
The simplest model takes and a constant finite gain . It gives
Thus below the amplifier has gain magnitude and inversion. Above that frequency it approaches an integrator with magnitude and phase . Constant finite gain by itself predicts no further high-frequency turnover.
For a more realistic sketch, use the standard dominant-pole open-loop gain , still with . Then
The exact frequency response is
Assuming and , the turnover frequencies are well separated: and , the approximate unity-gain angular frequency of the amplifier. The regimes are
with magnitude slopes per decade and smooth phase transitions. This is the solid curve in the figure; and denote the same phase.
If finite is retained and , the general expression instead approaches at very high frequency: the capacitor couples the input to the output through a passive voltage divider. The dashed curve illustrates that eventual feedthrough. Other amplifier poles or an external load would alter the response again. No particular values of are given in the paper, so the numerical sketch is illustrative and the general expression states the model dependence explicitly.
Temperature changes affect measurements through several routes. Thermal expansion changes lengths and alignments; temperature-dependent resistance and refractive index change electrical and optical calibrations; temperature differences between dissimilar junctions generate Seebeck effect voltages. These slow environmental changes are distinct from unavoidable equilibrium thermal fluctuations and Johnson-Nyquist noise. A useful strategy identifies the coupling to the measured signal before choosing a remedy.
Reduce environmental coupling by enclosing the apparatus against drafts, using thermal insulation and radiation shields, isolating heat sources, and minimizing dissipated power. A vacuum enclosure suppresses convection but leaves thermal conduction and thermal radiation paths to control. A large heat capacity reduces rapid temperature excursions. In a simple thermal model with heat capacity and thermal conductance to a reservoir, the relaxation time is , so adequate settling time is necessary after changing the apparatus. A temperature sensor close to the sensitive element and stable negative feedback heating or cooling can regulate its temperature; poorly placed sensors or excessive feedback gain can leave gradients or cause oscillations.
Electrical thermal noise has the classical low-frequency one-sided voltage power spectral density
for a resistor measured over a flat bandwidth without significant loading. More generally replace by the effective noise bandwidth. Lower temperature or narrower bandwidth reduces the noise, and resistance choices must account for source loading and the amplifier's own voltage and current noise. A lock-in amplifier uses modulation and narrowband detection to reject much low-frequency drift and out-of-band noise, while thermal noise inside the accepted band remains. Temperature stabilization does not remove equilibrium fluctuations.
Use a matched reference or differential bridge to reject common environmental changes. Keep junctions isothermal and choose matched materials to reduce thermoelectric offsets. For a resistance measurement, reversing a small test current separates a stable offset from the wanted voltage:
Reversal must be fast enough that the offset stays approximately fixed, with enough settling time and sufficiently little self-heating. Recording the sample temperature permits a measured calibration slope to correct a signal to a reference temperature; the correction's calibration and thermometer uncertainties must be propagated. Independent white noise fluctuations decrease under averaging, whereas correlated temperature drift may not decrease as the inverse square root of the number of readings. Temperature records and repeated reference measurements help distinguish the two.
Digital acquisition converts a continuous voltage signal into timed numerical samples. A practical chain is a suitably buffered and amplified sensor signal, an analogue anti-aliasing filter, a sampling or sample-and-hold stage, an analog-to-digital converter, and a clocked data-storage system. Choose the gain so that the interesting variation uses the available input range without clipping. Finite input impedance can load a sensor, so an appropriate buffer or operational amplifier may be needed.
Sampling makes time discrete. If the conditioned signal is confined below frequency , choose a sampling rate , allowing a transition band for the physical filter. The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem permits ideal reconstruction of a suitably bandlimited function from exact samples. Without filtering, components separated by integer multiples of have identical samples; in particular real sinusoids at and can be indistinguishable. This aliasing cannot generally be undone by later digital filtering. Oversampling can ease filter design, but does not replace the requirement to suppress unwanted high-frequency content before sampling.
Amplitude quantization is separate from sampling. A uniform -bit converter covering voltage span has step . Rounding an in-range input gives the uniform-quantization error bound . If the rounding errors can additionally be modeled as uniform and uncorrelated, their standard deviation is . This statistical estimate is not a guarantee for a constant input or a coherent periodic signal. More bits increase resolution, but accuracy also depends on voltage-reference calibration, offset, gain error, nonlinearity and electronic noise. Out-of-range signals clip and invalidate the rounding bound.
Clock quality matters too. Timing jitter gives a voltage error approximately ; for a sinusoid its scale grows with . A clock calibration error biases measured frequencies and time intervals. Simultaneous multichannel signals need known relative timing, and the sampling and analogue settling times must be appropriate to the signal bandwidth.
For channels the raw recording rate is approximately bits per second, before overhead, so storage and sustained transfer speed must prevent missing data. Store units, channel identities, timestamps, sampling rate, input ranges and calibration information along with the readings. Preserve the original samples when applying digital filters or other processing. Averaging can improve precision for independent fluctuating errors, but cannot restore aliased frequencies, clipped peaks or a fixed rounding bias. Digital recording makes reproducible analysis and transmission possible when its sampling, amplitude and timing limitations are all controlled.
Take a p-n junction made from one semiconductor, with the p-type semiconductor on the left and the n-type semiconductor on the right. At thermal equilibrium the chemical potential is horizontal throughout. Before contact the chemical potential lies nearer the valence band on the p side and nearer the conduction band on the n side; after contact the band edges bend to permit one common value.
In this orientation both the conduction band edge and the valence band edge decrease from p to n by . For a homojunction their separation is constant. The acceptor impurity level lies just above where acceptors are present, and the donor impurity level lies just below where donors are present. These impurity levels follow the local band bending; they do not form one additional horizontal band across the device.
The shaded depletion region has few mobile electrons or electron holes and contains fixed negative ionized acceptor impurities on the p side and positive ionized donor impurities on the n side. Thus its electric field points from n to p. Its neutral outer regions have negligible electric field, so the band edges become flat there. In the depletion approximation, charge neutrality requires ; the symmetric drawing illustrates rather than assuming that equality is universal. Diffusion and field-driven drift current cancel at equilibrium: no applied voltage does not mean zero internal electric field or zero built-in electric potential difference.
A Fourier series separates a periodic physical signal into harmonics. For example, a periodic voltage applied to a linear circuit can be treated one frequency at a time; the harmonic responses then superpose to give the output waveform.
Write for the pulse width and for its duty cycle, with . The waveform is a train of positive rectangular pulses centred on , each with area one. It is even about , so every sine coefficient vanishes. Cosine orthogonality gives
and, for ,
This is the Fourier series of a periodic rectangular pulse:
The actual constant term in the series is , not . As usual for a jump discontinuity, the series converges to the average of the one-sided values at each pulse edge, namely , irrespective of the value assigned at that isolated endpoint. Elsewhere it converges to the rectangular waveform.
Counting the constant as the first term, the first three terms are
so their sum is
If “first three” instead means the first three nonconstant harmonics, add ; the original plot shows that alternative partial sum as well. The three-term approximation rounds the narrow peaks and ripples between them; many harmonics are needed to represent a sharp pulse.
The original sketches use the illustrative duty cycle and cover . The coefficient panel also displays the first spectral zero.
For , expand the sinc function:
Thus the low-index coefficients, including , have nearly equal values, although their constant-series contribution still has the factor . The first sinc zero occurs at , or . If this is not an integer, the closest integer coefficient is near zero rather than exactly zero: writing gives . This pulse-width scale of Fourier coefficients means that a narrower pulse requires significant harmonics extending to proportionally larger indices, the reciprocal time-width/frequency-width relation.
In a charge-free region of homogeneous permittivity, Gauss's law and give Laplace's equation, . Prescribed surface electric potentials specify a Dirichlet problem. Its Uniqueness of the Dirichlet problem permits replacing conductors by fictitious charges outside the physical solution region: a harmonic candidate with the same boundary conditions is the physical solution. For an exterior problem its behaviour at infinity must also be prescribed. For a proof, subtract two candidate potentials to obtain with zero boundary values. Green's first identity gives , so is constant and its boundary value fixes it to zero. Conditions on a normal electric field instead determine a potential only up to an additive constant when the usual compatibility condition holds.
A cylindrical Gaussian surface around an infinite line charge gives . The electric potential difference is therefore
An isolated infinite line charge has no finite potential zero at infinity. For the opposite pair, however, the logarithmic growth terms cancel and one can choose there. Define and . superposition gives
On ,
Thus the circle, and its cylindrical extension, is an equipotential. This is an Apollonius circle: a constant ratio of distances gives a circle rather than a constant distance from either charge.
For the cylinder above the plane, call its centre height and set . The cylinder-plane image charges are at height and at height . Their distances are equal on the grounded plane, while their distance ratio is on the circular surface. The positive fictitious line lies inside the metal, so the exterior is charge-free and Uniqueness of the Dirichlet problem applies. A Gaussian surface enclosing the physical cylinder confirms that its charge per unit length is indeed . Its voltage is
The physical field energy per unit length at fixed cylinder charge is . Differentiate with respect to height, keeping and fixed:
The electrostatic attraction per unit length of a cylinder above a plane is downward for either sign of charge. Placing the fictitious line at the cylinder centre would give the wrong answer at this separation. The long-cylinder approximation neglects the ends.
For inner radius and outer conductor's inner radius , Gauss's law gives . Integrating across the dielectric gives voltage . Thus the capacitance per unit length is
The stated outer radius is interpreted as the radius of the dielectric-facing surface. Magnetic permeability affects inductance, but does not enter this electrostatic capacitance.
A transmission line stores electric and magnetic energy along its length, so voltage and current depend on both position and time. A distributed circuit uses inductance and capacitance per length, together with resistance and leakage conductance . Applying voltage and charge balance to a short segment gives the telegrapher's equations,
For a lossless line, both variables obey wave equations with speed and characteristic impedance . Forward and backward waves obey and . Matching a termination gives the voltage reflection coefficient
A matched load absorbs without reflection; an open circuit has , and a short has . Reflections can produce standing waves. A coaxial line confines the fields between conductors and, for a uniform dielectric TEM wave, has . Finite loss attenuates waves; frequency-dependent losses or material properties can also distort pulses. A long line is a wave-carrying distributed system, so it cannot generally be replaced by one lumped capacitor.
In microscopic SI form, Maxwell's equations couple charge density and current density to electric and magnetic fields:
Gauss's electric law expresses electric flux from charge and reduces to the inverse-square Coulomb field for a point charge. Gauss's magnetic law gives zero net magnetic flux through every closed surface; magnetic field lines do not begin or end on magnetic monopoles in this theory.
Faraday's induction law says changing magnetic flux produces a circulating electric field. For a fixed loop, its circulation is minus the rate of change of enclosed magnetic flux, explaining the sign of induction and Lenz's law. For example, changing a primary coil's electric current changes the flux through a stationary secondary coil and induces a voltage. A moving wire also has the magnetic part of the Lorentz force on its charges; the fixed-loop field equation and the full motional-emf calculation must be distinguished.
The Ampère-Maxwell law relates magnetic circulation to conduction current and displacement current. The latter is essential around a charging capacitor: a surface cutting the lead and another passing through the gap must predict the same circulation. Taking the divergence gives
using Gauss's electric law. Charge conservation therefore fixes the consistency of the time-dependent equations. In matter, the equivalent macroscopic equations use and , free sources and constitutive relations. The Lorentz force density describes exchange of momentum with charges.
In source-free vacuum, take the curl of Faraday's law and use . Both fields satisfy
For a plane wave, , and . The fields are transverse, mutually perpendicular and in phase. Their energy density and energy flux are
This is Poynting's theorem: field energy is transported and can do work on matter. Electromagnetic radiation is a propagating, energy-carrying solution of the coupled electric and magnetic field equations.
For distributed inductance and capacitance , a small segment obeys and . Differentiation gives and . For a forward wave,
A backward voltage wave has current . This sign matters at an impedance discontinuity.
The source figure is the stacked-strip parallel-plate transmission line geometry, despite its use of the word coplanar. Gauss's law gives . Opposite surface currents give magnetic field between the strips by Ampère's law; the magnetic flux per unit length is , hence . Therefore
No numerical is given; the impedance is appropriately left in terms of that ratio. The line is taken to be nonmagnetic and lossless.
Increasing the gap by changes to and to , so while is unchanged. voltage and current continuity at the step give
Consequently the voltage and energy-flux transmission coefficients are
Here amplitudes are peak voltage amplitudes, with mean power . The reciprocal gaps have : equal reflected energy but opposite voltage phase. A voltage transmission coefficient above one does not imply energy gain.
For a finite impedance section of a transmission line, put and . Multiple reflections inside the altered section interfere. Summing their geometric series, relative to the first boundary,
Transmission is unity at and minimal at , with minima . Resonances are separated by ; the long-wavelength limit also transmits fully. Matching the far termination removes end echoes, not the two internal reflections.
Figure 1.
Original calculated power transmission through a finite changed-impedance section between matched lines
. Details.
An applied electric field displaces bound charges or reorients permanent dipoles, producing electric polarization , the dipole moment per unit volume. It gives bound charges and . Define
for a linear isotropic dielectric. Then separates free charge from the bound-charge response. Electronic, ionic and orientational electric polarization respond on different timescales; real permittivity is frequency dependent, and its dissipative part describes dielectric loss.
A uniform dielectric filling a parallel-plate capacitor raises its capacitance to . At fixed charge this reduces field energy ; at fixed voltage the stored energy increases because the voltage source supplies charge and energy. Insulation and energy storage are useful applications, limited by loss and dielectric breakdown. Static interface conditions are continuous tangential and a jump in normal equal to free surface charge.
In electrostatics, the Maxwell equations in matter are
Here is free charge density and is polarization density. For a homogeneous isotropic linear dielectric, the constitutive equation is . Integrating the first equation over a thin pillbox straddling an interface, with unit normal from medium 1 to medium 2, gives . Integrating the second around a vanishingly narrow rectangular loop gives . These are the electrostatic interface boundary conditions. When there is no free surface electric charge, the normal electric displacement field and tangential electric field are continuous; the normal electric field generally is not.
Neglect end fringing field of a capacitor. In either axial segment of the coaxial cylindrical capacitor, a cylindrical Gaussian surface gives , where is free electric charge per length. Integrating the radial electric field between the conductors gives
The liquid and air segments share the same conductor electric potential difference, so their capacitances add in parallel. Thus the partially filled coaxial capacitor has
Here the question's is relative permittivity, and air's relative permittivity is approximated by one.
Write for the rise above the external level. The wide reservoir keeps that level approximately fixed. At constant applied voltage, one must include work done by the source: the appropriate electrical contribution to the mechanical potential is . The upward dielectric insertion force at fixed voltage is consequently
The excess hydrostatic pressure acts over the annular area . Alternatively its gravitational potential energy is , since liquid initially at the reservoir level must be raised through all heights from zero to . Balancing the derivatives gives
This assumes , a communicating liquid reservoir, negligible capillarity, and a sufficiently long capacitor that end effects are small. Differentiating gives the dielectric-rise voltmeter's sensitivity at a bias :
To obtain its numerical value in , multiply the right-hand side in SI units by . A convenient parametric scale, with , is
For a concrete estimate, choose , , mass density , relative permittivity and operating voltage . These are illustrative choices, not supplied apparatus data. They give
Thus this millimetre-scale example requires fine optical displacement measurement for volt-level changes. The parametric formula states exactly how the estimate changes with the chosen geometry, liquid and bias.
The displacement is quadratic in voltage, cannot distinguish its sign, and has zero first-order sensitivity at zero bias. Smaller gaps and larger relative permittivity increase sensitivity, but capillarity, leakage, dielectric breakdown, temperature-dependent liquid properties, and finite available rise then limit performance. A nonconducting liquid avoids a sustained conduction load, although charging still draws electric charge and leakage is possible. A high voltage can give a readable displacement; a low-voltage instrument would require fine displacement measurement and careful calibration.
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.
The characteristic impedance of a lossless transmission line is the ratio of the voltage to the current amplitude of a single forward-travelling wave. If and denote inductance and capacitance per unit length, the lossless telegrapher equations give
A backward wave has when current is positive along . Thus characteristic impedance is not a resistor's electrical resistance: it describes travelling-wave amplitudes and determines impedance matching, power transfer and reflections. A semi-infinite line, or a line terminated by a matching load, presents that impedance at its input.
At a junction with no lumped branch, voltage and electric current are continuous:
Eliminating gives the voltage reflection coefficient
For real positive , incident and reflected waves occupy the same line, so their power ratio is .
For the slightly mismatched coaxial cables, the change in characteristic impedance is
Consequently
The requested power limit implies . Since for the stated line, the adjacent cables' outer radii must match within approximately . If a tolerance is quoted separately as a symmetric manufacturing range and arbitrary worst-case pairs can differ by , the corresponding individual tolerance is approximately . The leading calculation is for small mismatches; the exact logarithmic expression gives slightly asymmetric positive and negative limits. The vacuum wave impedance used here is approximately .[ref]
A needle is a shunt electrical resistance , so the load seen at its location is the continuation of the line in parallel with : . The local voltage reflection coefficient and transmission amplitude are
For periodic resistive loading of a transmission line, the reflection from the next needle travels an additional round trip and crosses each previous needle twice. Taking the first needle as phase reference, the single-return approximation for periodic line reflections therefore sums to
Here is the propagation phase velocity in the cable, for the stated nondispersive nonmagnetic filling. Squaring the amplitude gives the requested expression
For a finite number of needles the amplitude has the additional numerator . The displayed semi-infinite result assumes sufficiently many needles, no terminal reflection, and neglects intrinsic propagation loss.
For real , write . The denominator of the power coefficient is . It has constructive peaks at and minima at , repeating with frequency spacing . Within this approximation,
Weak individual shunts thus give narrow interference peaks, with phase width of order .
The requested sum excludes paths that reflect repeatedly between different needles. It should not be read as an exact multiple-scattering result, particularly at the coherent peaks. For example the exact semi-infinite amplitude satisfies
At this equation reduces to : the exact ideal infinite array has unit power reflection there, rather than the first-return approximation's value near . This does not change the requested geometric-series derivation, but identifies its physical limitation.
The method of images replaces induced charges or currents on a boundary by fictitious sources outside the physical region, chosen to satisfy that boundary's conditions. For example, a point charge a height above a grounded conducting plane has an image at the reflected point. The sum has zero potential on the plane, and the electrostatic uniqueness theorem identifies it with the physical solution in the upper half-space. Images do not describe a second physical charge below the metal.
For the superconducting plane, use the different boundary condition at its surface: magnetic flux cannot enter the ideal bulk. Choose the real ring moment , where , at . Its image has moment at . This superconducting plane image dipole makes the normal fields cancel at , while their tangential fields add. The image is a computational continuation; the physical field inside the plane is zero. The original sketch shows the dipole-scale field, appropriate to ; the fine field close to the ring wire is outside that approximation.
Figure 1.
Original dipole-scale field above a flux-excluding plane, with the opposite image moment shown schematically
. Details.
In the vacuum region the magnetic scalar potential is
At the surface , it reduces to . Its tangential derivative therefore gives
Both and vanish there; the sign is inward radially for the chosen positive moment. The expression is the leading dipole result, not an exact finite-ring formula at arbitrary .
For the force, calculate the external image field on the axis near the real dipole:
Differentiate this field with the image location held fixed, then evaluate at . The dipole levitation force above a superconducting plane is
directed upward. Differentiating a substituted separation while moving both dipoles in the force derivative would incorrectly double the result.
To levitate ring mass , balance this force against :
A light, thin wire and the smallest practical gap reduce current. At fixed gap and wire cross-section , gives , favouring a larger ring until the dipole-limit constraint on matters. There is no unique least current without geometric and material constraints. As a geometrically consistent order-of-magnitude example, take , , wire radius and an assumed metallic-scale density . Then and . The large value reflects the weak force in the stipulated far-field geometry. Uniformly shrinking this geometrical example reduces current as size to the power , but increases required electric current density; arbitrarily thin wire is therefore not a free optimization.
This balance estimate is not a verified superconducting design. The actual wire must carry that current without quenching, its self-field counts toward the limit, the plane must remain in its assumed flux-excluding state, and leads or supports add load. Transport critical-current measurements specify temperature, applied field and the voltage criterion rather than a material-independent limiting current.[ref]
For a linear nondispersive medium with real absolute permittivity and permeability , instantaneous field energy density and energy flux are
with local balance . energy stored locally and energy passing through a surface are distinct: integrating the balance relates their rates and the power given to charges.
Between the coaxial conductors, cylindrical Gauss and Ampère laws give
The inner line charge is , so the capacitance per length is . Integrating magnetic energy over the annulus gives , hence . Thus
These are per-length parameters for ideal conductors, excluding internal magnetic penetration.
Now let the voltage and current amplitudes be and multiply both transverse fields by . Their divergences vanish in the annular dielectric. The two nontrivial curl equations reduce to
Consequently both and are required for a forward wave. Arbitrary independent static and cannot acquire the same forward-wave factor and still satisfy Maxwell's equations. This TEM travelling-wave voltage-current relation and the dispersion constraint identify the transverse electromagnetic mode and its speed .
For the travelling wave, . Integrating over the dielectric annulus yields
This is the familiar circuit power, carried here through the dielectric rather than through the ideal metal. In root mean square notation it is for the forward lossless wave; the corresponding static fields give without a time-average factor. The average line energy is , whose product with wave speed agrees with the power.
Finite conductor resistance requires a small longitudinal electric field to drive current. Its cross product with the azimuthal magnetic field produces a radial Poynting component into each conductor: inward radially at the inner conductor and outward radially into the outer conductor. This Poynting flux into lossy coaxial conductors explains why forward power decreases along the cable as energy becomes heat in the metal. The mode is then only approximately TEM; strictly zero longitudinal electric field would be inconsistent with resistive current.
For a lossless transmission line with characteristic impedance and resistive termination , the voltage reflection coefficient is
The reflected pulse is inverted and has half the incident voltage, so . Substituting the termination gives
The echo delay is a round trip from the observation point to the termination and back, not a one-way travel time. Thus the propagation speed is
For a homogeneous, nonmagnetic coaxial cable dielectric, , giving . More generally the measured speed fixes ; identifying this with relative permittivity assumes and negligible dispersion or attenuation of the pulse.
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.
Free charge is charge assigned to externally supplied or mobile carriers in a macroscopic description. Bound charge describes the net charge associated with a material's polarization density . Its bulk and surface densities are
where the normal points out of the polarized material. Uniform bulk polarization density has no bulk bound charge, but it can still have surface bound charge.
The electric field is sourced by the total electric charge. Introducing the electric displacement field separates the free source in the macroscopic field equation:
This does not mean that bound charges are physically absent from : they are represented through . In a linear isotropic dielectric, and , with .
Across a stationary ordinary dielectric interface, electrostatics gives continuity of tangential electric field, while a free sheet charge gives
The normal electric field need not be continuous. For a fully filled parallel-plate capacitor at fixed free plate charge, polarization reduces the internal electric field by and increases capacitance by the same factor. If a battery instead holds the voltage fixed, extra free plate charge flows from the battery; the constraint must be stated before comparing stored energies.[ref]
An electrostatic field calculation begins by specifying the charge information, material response and boundary conditions. In vacuum, prescribed volume and surface electric charge densities can be superposed directly using Coulomb's law. For a volume distribution,
Differentiating this electric potential gives the electric field. This is useful for known source distributions, but in the presence of conductors the induced surface electric charge is usually an unknown rather than an independently specified input.
Gauss's law is especially effective when symmetry fixes the direction and magnitude of the electric field on a suitable closed surface. A spherical charge distribution gives a radial field, an infinitely long uniform line gives a cylindrical field, and a uniform infinite sheet gives a planar field. In an arbitrary geometry, the flux law remains true but does not alone determine the pointwise electric field. A multipole expansion is another useful approximation: far from a localized charge distribution, successive monopole, dipole and higher terms separate the effects of total charge and its spatial structure.
For a boundary-value formulation, use the electrostatic equations
They imply Poisson equation , or Laplace equation where . A conductor in electrostatic equilibrium is an equipotential with zero internal electric field. Its exterior normal electric field fixes the surface electric charge through . One must specify whether each conductor is grounded, maintained at a prescribed voltage, or isolated with prescribed total electric charge.
Uniqueness of Poisson equation justifies methods that construct a convenient candidate solution. With fixed boundary electric potential and suitable behaviour at infinity, a solution satisfying the field equation is the solution. With normal-derivative boundary conditions, the source and flux must be compatible, and the electric potential is determined only up to an additive constant.
For example, a point charge a distance above a grounded infinite plane has the same upper-half-space electric potential as and a mirrored image charge below it. Their potentials cancel on the plane. The image is a mathematical source in the excluded region, not a second physical charge. Separation of variables similarly constructs solutions suited to rectangular, cylindrical or spherical boundaries; matching coefficients enforces the prescribed boundary data.
In dielectrics, the distinction between total and free charge is essential. In a linear isotropic material,
Only where permittivity is constant may this be reduced to . At an ordinary interface, and the tangential electric field are continuous, while the jump in normal electric displacement field is the free surface charge. Applying Gauss's law to total charge with , or its displacement-field form to free charge, gives consistent descriptions; mixing their sources and permittivities does not.
A useful interface example is the image charge at a dielectric interface. If lies in medium 1, the source-side potential is represented by
where is distance to the real charge and to its mirrored position. The other-side potential can be written , where . Continuity of and of normal fixes both coefficients. The equal-permittivity limit gives no image; the conductor limit gives .
For a sphere of radius and relative permittivity in a uniform external electric field , matching the spherical solutions gives a uniform internal electric field and an external induced electric dipole moment:
This illustrates how a material boundary modifies an otherwise simple applied electric field.
For complex boundaries or spatially varying materials, finite difference methods or the finite element method solve the same boundary value problem numerically. A sound calculation checks its boundary conditions, charge or flux balance and convergence with mesh refinement. The governing equations, source classification and uniqueness argument remain the organizing principles even when an analytic formula is unavailable.