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PHY 415: Electromagnetic Theory I
Prof. S. Teitel stte@pas.rochester.edu ---- Fall 2018

Lecture Notes

My hand written class lecture notes are being scanned and uploaded for you to view. Please be warned that these are the notes I prepare for myself to lecture from - they are not in general carefully prepared for others to read. I make no guarantees about their legibility, or that they are totally free of errors. I hope, nevertheless that you will find them useful. The lectures are uploaded as pdf files, so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read them. You can download Acrobat Reader for free here.

The lecture note files correspond roughly to the material presented in a given day's lecture. But you may on occassion find the end of one day's lecture at the start of the file for the next day's lecture, so please look there if you think there might be something missing.

  • Lecture 0 - A brief history of electromagnetism

  • Lecture 1 - From Coulomb to Maxwell: charge, Coulomb's law, the electric field, differential and integral form of Maxwell's equations for electrostatics

  • Lecture 2 - From Coulomb to Maxwell: Maxwell's equations for electrostatics, Helmholtz's Theorem, Lorentz force, the magnetic field, Biot-Savart law, current density, local charge conservation and the definition of magnetostatics

  • Lecture 3 - Maxwell's equations for magnetostatics, Faraday's Law, Maxwell's correction to Ampere's Law, EM waves, systems of units, scalar and vector potentials in statics

  • Lecture 4 - Potentials and gauge invariance in dynamics, Lorentz gauge, Coulomb gauge, longitudinal and transverse parts of a vector function, review of Fourier transforms

  • Lecture 5 - Physical meaning of the electrostatic potential, Green's function, conductors in electrostatics, Coulomb problem as a boundary value problem, electric field at a charged surface, Dirichlet vs Neumann boundary condition, examples

  • Lecture 6 - Green's identities, uniquness of solutions to the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary value problem, Greens functions for Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions

  • Lecture 7 - The image charge method for a charge in front of an infinite grounded plane and in front of a grounded conducting sphere, charge in front of a charged conducting sphere

  • Lecture 8 - Separation of variables method in rectangular and polar coordinates, electric field at a sharp edge, separation of variables in spherical coordinates

  • Lecture 9 - Legendre polynomials, examples of problems with azimuthal symmetry.
    Green's functions, part III - Eigenfunction expansion for the Greens function - we did not go over this in lecture, but it is nevertheless something you should know about!

  • Lecture 10 - Electrostatic multipole expansion, monopole, dipole, quadrupole moments, dependence on choice of coordinate origin

  • Lecture 11 - Electric quadrupole example, magnetostatic multipole expansion, magnetic dipole approximation

  • Lecture 12 -Some additional points on the electric quadrupole moment and the electric multipole expansion, magnetic dipole for a flat planar loop, magnetostatic scalar potential, boundary conditions at a sheet current, examples

  • Lecture 13 - More examples for the magnetic scalar potential, symmetry under parity transformations, vectors and psuedovectors, macroscopic Maxwell's equations

  • Lecture 14 - Dielectrics, polarization density, electric displacement vector D, bound surface charge density

  • Lecture 15 - Magnetic materials, magnetization density and bound current, the magnetic field H

  • Lecture 16 - Conservation of bound charge, bound surface current, vanishing of total bound charge and bound current, boundary conditions, linear materials, electric and magnetic susceptibilities, dielectric constant, magnetic permeability, atomic polarizability and the Clausius-Mossotti equation

  • Lecture 17 - Screening of free charge, examples, a point charge in a dielectric sphere

  • Lecture 18 - Bar magnets, electromagnetism and conservation of energy, electromagnetic energy density, Poynting vector, conservation of momentum

  • Lecture 19 - Maxwell stress tensor, force on a conducting surface,capacitance matrix, inductance matrix, electromagnetic waves in a vacuum

    Supplement - Force, torque, and interaction energy for electric and magnetic dipoles in an external field - we did not go over this in lecture.
  • Lecture 20 - Energy and momentum in electromagntic waves, frequency dependent atomic polarizability, complex frequency dependent dielectric function

  • Lecture 21 - Electromagnetic waves in a dielectric, dispersion relation, phase velocity, group velocity, normal and anomalous dispersion, transparent propagation, resonant absorption, total reflection

  • Lecture 22 - Electromagnetic waves in conductors, frequency dependent conductivity, low frequency "good" conductors, skin depth, high frequencies, longitudinal modes and plasma oscillations, linear polarization of transverse waves

  • Lecture 23 - Linear, circular and elliptical polarization, waves at interfaces, angles of incidence, reflection and transmission, Snell's law, total internal reflection

  • Lecture 24 - Snell's law for dissipative media, coefficient of reflection, total reflection, Brewster's angle

  • Lecture 25 - Kramers-Kronig relation, Green's function for the wave equation, Lienard-Weichert potentials for a moving charged particle, potentials from a point charged particle moving with constant velocity

  • Lecture 26 - Radiation from a source oscillating with simple harmonic motion, electric dipole, magnetic dipole, and electric quadrupole radiation

  • Lecture 27 - Radiated E and B fields, Poynting vector, and radiated power from an oscillating source in the electric dipole, magnetic dipole, and electric quadrupole approximations, radiation from a general time dependent source, Larmor's formula for radiation from an accelerating charge

  • Lecture 28 - Special relativity, Lorentz transformation, 4-vectors, proper time, 4-velocity, 4-gradient, 4-current, 4-potential, field strength tensor and Maxwell's equations

  • Lecture 29 - Dual field strength tensor, transformation of E and B fields, 4-momentum, Minkowski force, Lorentz force, relativistic Larmor's formula