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UFN, 2009 Volume 179, Number 9, Pages 995–1001 (Mi ufn820)

This article is cited in 19 papers

METHODOLOGICAL NOTES

Force on matter in an electromagnetic field

V. P. Makarova, A. A. Rukhadzeb

a A. M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
b Faculty of Physics, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University

Abstract: This is in fact a follow up to a paper by V. L. Ginzburg and V. A. Ugarov (Usp. Fiz. Nauk 118 175 (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.

PACS: 03.30.+p, 03.50.De, 41.20.-q

Received: October 17, 2008
Revised: June 25, 2009

DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.0179.200909e.0995


 English version:
Physics–Uspekhi, 2009, 52:9, 937–943

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