Magnetostatics

1 2.1 Magnetostatics of Currents and Materials

1.1 1.1 MAGNETOSTATICS OF CURRENTS IN VACUUM

As described in the first chapter, the historical description of magnets was based on the idea of magnetic charges. Contrary to this Coulombian approach, we introduce here magnetostatics from the point of view of electric currents, the Ampérian approach, which corresponds better to the modern perspective on magnetism. We make the assumption that the reader is familiar with electric current, and we will only recall some of the key results, whose derivations can be found in one of the many text books on electromagnetism and magnetostatics [1, 2, 3].

1.1.1 1.1.1 Fundamental laws of magnetostatics: magnetic induction

In the literature one often comes across two terms, magnetic induction, and magnetic field, to describe the same quantity B. The International Electrotechnical Commission recommends calling B the magnetic induction, and H the magnetic field. In this text, we also use the terms “B–...