Course Outline:

  • 24 lecture course + 6 whiteboard tutorials
  • 2 or 3 lectures per week, one whiteboard tutorial per 4 lectures
  • 12 lectures in 1st quarter (Prof Jon Rash), 12 lectures in 2nd quarter (Dr Gary Tupper); times TBA
  • 2 Class Tests, Final Exam
  • Evaluation: 25% tutorial hand-ins, 25% Class Tests, 50% Final Exam

Contents:

  • Vectors and Tensors Gradient, Divergence, The Laplacian, Curl, Tensor notation.
  • Maxwell's Equations The Electric Field and Coulomb's law, The electric scalar potential, Electric Flux Density, Gauss' law, Poisson's equation, Magnetic Flux Density, Ampère's Law, Magnetic Field Strength, Magnetostatics, magnetic dipole, diamagnetism and paramagnetism, Helmholtz's theorem, The Lorentz Force, Movement of Charged Particles in a Magnetic Field, The Magnetic Vector Potential, The Biot-Savart law. Effects of dielectric and magnetic media. The Displacement Current, Ampère's Law revisited, Faraday's Law, The magnetic vector potential, Integral form and point forms of Maxwell's equations, Gauge transformation and Invariance.
  • Electromagnetic Waves The Wave equation, Plane waves, Phase and Group velocity, Propagation in a dielectric medium, Propagation in an ionized medium, Reflection at a boundary, Polarisation, Polarisation ellipse, Linear, Circular & Elliptical polarisation, Partial Polarization & Stokes parameters, Faraday rotation, Whistlers.
  • Relativity and Electromagnetism Relativity principle, Lorentz transformation, Transformation of velocities and fields, 4-velocity and 4-acceleration, Current density 4-vector, Potential 4-vector.
  • Electromagnetic energy and momentum Poynting flux, Energy conservation, Electromagnetic momentum, Maxwell Stress Tensor.
  • Single particle motion Cyclotron motion, Cross fields & drift, Motion in non-homogeneous magnetic fields – drift and trapping.
  • Radiative Processes Retarded potentials and fields, Electric and magnetic fields of a moving charged particle, Constant velocity, Accelerating, Larmor's Formula, Thomson & Rayleigh Scattering, Blackbody Radiation, Bremsstrahlung, Cyclotron Radiation, Čerenkov Radiation.
  • Antennas The Hertzian dipole, Electric dipole radiation, Radiation Resistance, Antenna Gain, Antenna Arrays.
  • Relativity Revisited Covariant electrodynamics and Synchrotron Radiation.