Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
11.1 Boundary conditions for the normal components of the fields
namics.
are known as the boundary conditions for the electromagnetic field. Consider
the pillbox in the following figure where two different media are characterised
is shown with a curved surface. The height of the pillbox is h and the two
flat surfaces of the pillbox in two different media are shown by δA1 and δA2 .
^n2
δA2 µ2 , ∋
2
h
δA1
^n1
µ1 ,
∋
1
pillbox.
Z Z
∇ · DdV = ρdV (11.1)
Z Z
D · dS = ρdV (11.2)
where S is the total surface area of the pillbox. Now the left hand side of the
above equation is
D(2) · n̂2 δA2 + D(1) · n̂1 δA1 + flux through the curved surface of the pillbox,
(11.3)
where the superscripts identify the fields in different media We now reduce
the height of the pillbox eventually making it to zero. In this case the area of
the curved surface reduces to zero and hence the flux through it is also zero.
In this situation, n̂2 = −n̂1 = n̂ and δA2 = δA1 = δA. The right hand side of
the equation for small δA becomes ρ̄δA. Using the above relations in (11.2),
The above condition says that there is an abrupt jump in the normal compo-
nent of the displacement vector while crossing the medium if there is a non
zero surface charge density on the interface. Similarly we proceed with the
which says the normal component of the magnetic filed is always continuous.
Let us consider the following small closed curve, P QRS, across the interface
of two media. The area, PQRS, has the unit vector b̂, which is normal to
∂B
∇×E=− .
∂t
^
^t n2 P ∋
µ 2, 2
2
Q µ 1, 1
∋
S
^t
R ^b 1
The scalar product of the above equation with b̂ds is integrated over the
surface P QRS.
∂B
Z Z
∇ × E · b̂ds = − · b̂ds, (11.6)
P QRS ∂t
∂B
I Z
E · dr = − · b̂ds. (11.7)
P QRS ∂t
where t̂2 and t̂1 are the unit vectors along P Q and RS respectively. δl2 and
Now in the limit QR → 0 and SP → 0 the right hand side of the equation
(11.9) vanishes(as the area of P QRS vanishes) as well as in the left hand
side the contributions from QR and SP also vanish and then we have (with
δl1 = δl2 )
Since the b̂ arbitrary we get the following condition for the tangential com-
ponent of the electric field (for n̂2 = n̂, normal to the surface),
Similarly proceeding with the Maxwell’s equation (3.4), we get the condition