MANDATORY TOPICS
 

Topic 1:

Gauss's Law, conductors, surface charges and boundary conditions. Poisson's equation and Green's functions. Scalar potential. (one week)

Topic 2:

Electrostatic energy, capacitance, and variational methods. Methods of images and inversion in 2 and 3 dimensions. (one week)

Topic 3:

Eigenfunctions of Laplaces equation by separation of variables in rectangular coordinates in 2 and 3 dimensions and the relavent Green's functions. Interior solutions for general rectangular boundary conditions. (one week)

Topic 4:

Separation of variables for problems with cylindrical symmetry in 2 dimensions and spherical and cylindrical symmetry ing three dimensions. Obtaining the relavent Green's functions and the general solution for boundry conditions with the appropriate symmetry. This includes the properties of spherical harmonic and Bessel's functions. (4 weeks)

Topic 5:

Multipole moments of a charge distribution and energy in an external field. Relation of microscopic electrostatics to macroscopic fields. Dielectric materials and the D field. (1 1/2 weeks)

Topic 6:

Magnetostatics, forces and torques, magnetic field and the Biot-Savart law. Vector potential and applications. Scalar magnetic potential -definition and limitations. Boundary conditions. (1 week)

Topic 7:

Forces on current distribution in an external magnetic field. Macroscopic magnetostatics and magnetization. Boundary conditions and ferromagnetic materials. (one week)

Topic 8:

Faraday's Law and displacement current. Maxwell's equations for fields and potential. Magnetic field energy. Gauge invariance. (one week)

Topic 9:

Macroscopic equations for electrodynamics. Conservation of energy and momentum in electrodynamics. (0ne week)

Topic 10:

Solution to wave equation and definition of the propagator. Boundary conditions. Transformation properties of electrodynamic quantities. (0ne week)

Topic 11:

E&M waves, boundary conditions, polarization, reflection and refraction. Waves in a general dielectric medium. (one week)

Topic 12:

E&M waves: phase and group velocities and the uncertainty relation. Dispersion, absorption and the Kromers-Kronig relation. Waves in a conduction media. (one week)

Topic 13:

Wave guides: conducting and dielectric. Fiber optic modes.(one week)

Topic 14:

Scalar and vector formulation of diffraction. Babenet principle. Resolving power of lens and limitations on laser beams.(one week)

Links to exisiting web page for this course:

Currently does not exist.

Prepared by Jim Ball