Magnetic field
A vector-valued function of space-time variables describing a force acting on a moving electrical charge and proportional to the charge velocity in the following sense. The total force which acts on a charge
moving with velocity
is given by the Lorentz force law
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where is the electric intensity field. The vector
is called the magnetic field (see, e.g., [a1], Sect. 1). However, quite often
is considered as a vector of magnetic induction (see, e.g., [a2], Sect. 29), while the vector
related to
by the material equation
is named magnetic intensity field or simply magnetic field. Here,
denotes the material permeability. Together with the electric intensity field
, the vector
satisfies the Maxwell equations.
References
[a1] | R. Feynman, R. Leighton, M. Sands, "The Feynman lectures on physics" , 2 , Addison-Wesley (1964) |
[a2] | L.D. Landau, Ye.M. Lifshits, "Course of theoretical physics: Electrodynamics of continuous media" , VIII , Nauka (1992) (In Russian) (English transl.: Pergamon) |
Magnetic field. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL: http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Magnetic_field&oldid=19112