Abstract:
This is in fact a follow up to a paper by V. L. Ginzburg and V. A. Ugarov (Usp. Fiz. Nauk118 175 (1976) [Sov. Phys. Usp.19 94 (1976)]. It is shown that the macroscopic Maxwell equations and the corresponding equations of state combined with the equations of motion of matter (equations of hydrodynamics) are sufficient to uniquely produce the following results familiar from Landau and Lifshitz's Electrodynamics of Continuous Media (Moscow: Nauka, 1982, p. 75) and also given in Fundamentals of the Theory of Electricity by I. E. Tamm (Moscow: Nauka, 1989, p. 105): 1) the force on a unit volume of matter at rest can be regarded as the sum of the Helmholtz force and the Abraham force; 2) the electromagnetic field momentum density is the Poynting vector divided by $c^2$; 3) the field stress tensor has identically the same form as the sum of the stress tensor of the electrostatic field and the strain tensor of the magnetostatic field, pointing to the symmetric form of the Abraham tensor as the correct form of the electromagnetic field energy-momentum tensor for a medium at rest.