Related papers: Improving student understanding of electrodynamics…
It is common practice to take for granted the equality (up to the constant $\varepsilon_0$) of the electric displacement ($\bf{D}$) and electric ($\bf{E}$) field vectors in vacuum. The same happens with the magnetic field ($\bf{H}$) and the…
The Casimir effect, a key observable realization of vacuum fluctuations, is usually taught in graduate courses on quantum field theory. The growing importance of Casimir forces in microelectromechanical systems motivates this subject as a…
Quasistatics is introduced so that it fits smoothly into the standard textbook presentation of electrodynamics. The usual path from statics to general electrodynamics is rather short and surprisingly simple. A closer look reveals however…
The Casimir effect, which predicts the emergence of an attractive force between two parallel, highly reflecting plates in vacuum, plays a vital role in various fields of physics, from quantum field theory and cosmology to nanophotonics and…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
Presenting systems of differential equations in the form of diagrams has become common in certain parts of physics, especially electromagnetism and computational physics. In this work, we aim to put such use of diagrams on a firm…
Some pedagogical aspects of the formulation of electrodynamics independently of the system of units are commented. Only electrodynamics in vacuum is considered. It is pointed out the efficiency of using a notation system close to SI.
General linear electrodynamics allow for an arbitrary linear constitutive relation between the field strength two-form and induction two-form density if crucial hyperbolicity and energy conditions are satisfied, which render the theory…
In this article we investigate the Casimir effect in the presence of a medium by quantizing the Electromagnetic (EM) field in the presence of a magnetodielectric medium by using the path integral formalism. For a given medium with definite…
This is a short introduction of the exterior form formalism focus on its applications in physics and then mostly aimed to physics students. As a rule of a game played here we never use a coordinate frame neither in the definitions nor in…
Differential forms provide a coordinate-free way to express many quantities and relations in mathematical physics. In particular, they are useful in plasma physics. This tutorial gives a guide so that you can read the plasma physics…
The Casimir effect is an interesting phenomenon in the sense that it provides us with one of the primitive means of extracting the energy out of the vacuum. Since the original work of Casimir a number of works have appeared in extending the…
The purpose of this sophomore-level textbook is twofold: to introduce the student to classical electrodynamics and, at the same time, explain in simple terms the quantum theory of conducting substances (in particular, the solid ones). The…
The electromagnetic vacuum is known to have energy. It has been recently argued that the quantum vacuum can possess momentum, that adds up to the momentum of matter. This ``Casimir momentum'' is closely related to the Casimir effect, in…
In 1953 Casimir proposed a semiclassical model for the electron based on the concept that net inward radiation pressure from the electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations fields (as in the Casimir effect, generally) might play the role of…
Two thin conducting, electrically neutral, parallel plates forming an isolated system in vacuum exert attracting force on each other, whose origin is the quantum electrodynamical interaction. This theoretical hypothesis, known as Casimir…
The region very close to an electron ($r << r_0 = e^2/mc^2 \approx 2.8\times 10^{-13}$ cm) is, according to quantum electrodynamics, a seething maelstrom of virtual electron-positron pairs flashing in and out of existence. To take account…
The concept of electromotive force (emf) may be introduced in various ways in an undergraduate course of theoretical electromagnetism. The multitude of alternate expressions for the emf is often the source of confusion to the student. We…
In a previous work we formulated a model of semitransparent dielectric surfaces, coupled to the electromagnetic field by means of an effective potential. Here we consider a setup with two dissimilar mirrors, and compute exactly the…
In this paper, we use differential forms to prove a number of theorems of integral vector calculus that are rarely found in textbooks. Two of them, as far as the author knows, have not been published before. Some possible applications to…