A magnetic dipole is a fundamental magnetic source characterized by two equal and opposite magnetic poles—often described as a north pole and a south pole—separated by a distance. This concept is analogous to an electric dipole, which consists of two equal and opposite electric charges separated by a distance.
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A localized magnetic source described at leading nonvanishing dipole order by a magnetic dipole moment. A small current loop is one classical model. The source object, its moment vector and the resulting magnetic dipole field are distinct concepts. At large distance from a source with nonzero dipole moment, higher multipoles give smaller corrections; if the dipole moment vanishes, a higher-order term can lead instead.
A tiny idealized magnet! It is a very good model if you have a small strong magnet interacting with objects that are far away, notably other magnetic dipoles or a constant magnetic field.
The cool thing about this model is that we have simple explicit formulas for the magnetic field it produces, and for how this little magnet is affected by a magnetic field or by another magnetic dipole.
This is the perfect model for electron spin, but it can also be representative of macroscopic systems in the right circumstances.
Different macroscopic magnets can be approximated by a magnetic dipole when shrunk seen from far away
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