English

Charge densities that change linearly with time are effectively electrostatic

Classical Physics 2018-01-01 v2

Abstract

We consider classical electromagnetic systems in which the current density J{\bf J} does not change with time, but has nonzero divergence, so that electric charge does build up steadily over time. We show that for such a system, the \emph{exact} electromagnetic fields are given by the Coulomb and Biot-Savart laws with the sources evaluated at the \emph{present} (rather than retarded) time, even though the charge density is changing over time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.05060,
  title  = {Charge densities that change linearly with time are effectively electrostatic},
  author = {Edward Parker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.05060},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

After posting this article, I discovered that its result was already reported in Griffiths and Heald, Am. J. Phys. 59, 111 (1991)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:16:35.901Z