31-12-2020

12.30-1.30 PM

Electrodynamics
by
Rajendra Singh
rsingh1_2@yahoo.com
Electric Fields in Matter
Matter may be solids, liquids, gases, metals, woods, glasses etc. However we classify them here as:
1. Conductors and 2. Insulators (dielectric)
Conductor contains an "unlimited" supply of charges that are free to move about through the material while,
in dielectrics, by contrast, all charges are attached to specific atoms or molecules-they're on a tight leash, and
all they can do is move a bit within the atom or molecule: microscopic displacements

Polarization:

When an insulator is brought in an electric field

a. The field pushes the nucleus away in the

the direction of electric field and
b. the electrons are pulled in opposite direction

If the field is large enough, it can pull the atom

Apart completely, "ionizing" it (the substance then
becomes a conductor).
With less extreme fields, however, an equilibrium is soon established, but the center of the electron cloud
does not coincide with the nucleus, these positive and negative charges attract one another, and this holds
the atoms together. E pulling the electrons and nucleus apart, reach a balance, leaving the atom polarized.
The atom now has a tiny dipole moment p, which points in the same direction as E. Typically, this induced dipole
moment is approximately proportional to the field: The const. is atomic polarizability

Equilibrium occurs when the nucleus is displaced a distance d from the

center of the sphere.
At that point the external field pushing the nucleus to the right exactly
balances the internal field pulling it to the left: E = Ee , where Ee is the field
produced by the electron cloud.

Now the field at a distance d from the center of a uniformly charged sphere is:

The atomic polarizability is therefore

 In molecules, (Symmetric and a symmetric molecules)
it is bit more complex and therefore the direction of the field is resolved in parallel and perpendicular directions

If the field is uniform, the force on the positive end, F+ = qE, exactly cancels the force
on the negative end, F _ = -qE . However, there will be a torque:

E is varying, so that F+ does not exactly balance F_, there will be a net force on the dipole, in addition to the torque.

For a small dipole and using approximation the

Theorem of partial derivatives small change in Ex

where And so,

So, “ a lot of little dipoles pointing along the direction of the field-the material becomes polarized””. A convenient
measure of this effect is
P dipole moment per unit volume

In polar molecules there will be some polarization by displacement (it is a lot easier to rotate a molecule than to stretch it)

The Field of a Polarized Object

For a piece of polarized material i.e. an object containing a lot of microscopic dipoles lined up.
The dipole moment per unit volume is P. Then the field produced by this object (not the field
that may have caused the polarization but the field the polarization itself causes). For a single
dipole p we have equation

Where is the vector from the dipole to the point at which we are evaluating the potential. In
the present context we have a dipole moment in each volume element , so
the total potential is

But
 Integrating by parts, using product rule number 5, gives surface integral of a vector field
over a closed surface, which is
called the flux through the
surface, is equal to the volume
Using the divergence theorem integral of the divergence over
the region inside the surface

We define the potential of a surface charge

(where is the normal unit vector),
and the potential of a volume charge

The potential (and hence also the field) of a polarized object is the same as that produced by a
volume charge density plus a surface charge density .

Instead of integrating the contributions of all the infinitesimal dipoles, we just find those bound charges, and
then calculate the fields they produce, in the same way we calculate the field of any other volume and surface
charges (for example. using Gauss's law).