Abstract
In the previous chapter we saw that an electric charge at rest creates a surrounding static field. A charge moving with constant velocity creates a constant electromagnetic field displacing with the charge. However, an accelerated charge produces a field of a different nature: a radiation field, which propagates far from its source and becomes independent of it. A charge moving at constant velocity is displaced with its field, but does not emit radiation. Charge acceleration is a necessary and sufficient condition for the generation of electromagnetic radiation. We shall see later that radiation behaves in dual form, as waves and as particles (photons), but this chapter will deal mainly with the wave behaviour of radiation.
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Literature
F.S. Crawford, Waves, Berkeley Physics Course (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1965). An excellent book devoted to wave motion
J.D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd edn. (Wiley, New York, 1998). An updated and first-rate treatise on classical electrodynamics. The problem of classical electromagnetic radiation is discussed at an advanced level
M. Chaichian, I. Merches, A. Tureanu, Electrodynamics (Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 2014). This book is recommended to complement several topics dealt with in the present chapter
B. Rossi, Optics (Addison Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1956). An excellent treatise on optics
L.D. Landau, E.M. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1965). The important topics of optics are discussed in an original way
R.P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Definitive Edition (Pearson, Addison Wesley, 2006). In the first volume, the discussion about wave interference and diffraction is a masterpiece
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Chaichian, M., Rojas, H.P., Tureanu, A. (2014). Electromagnetic Waves. In: Basic Concepts in Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_4
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