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11.1 Dipole Radiation

11.1.1 Electric Dipole Radiation

Consider a dipole which is "oscillating" at some particular frequency. This looks like two metal spheres separated by distance and connected by a small wire; at time the charge on the upper sphere is and the charge on the lower sphere is . We drive the charge back and forth through the wire from one sphere to the other at an angular frequency

The dipole moment is

Of course, we consider the harmonically oscillating dipole because we can build any other oscillations out of this basis.

Figure 11.2

The retarded potential of this oscillating dipole is the superposition of the two point charges:

where

To take this physical dipole towards a perfect dipole, we want

This approximation gives us

so that

and

In the limit of a perfect dipole, we take the dipole approximation

Under that condition,

Finally, we do not really care what happens near the origin. Rather, we are looking for the far-field behavior of the radiation, so we must consider fields that survive at large distances from the source:

In this region, the retarded potential reduces to

What about the vector potential? In our model of spheres connected by a wire, it is determined by the current flowing in the wire:

so

Given our previous approximations, since the integration itself happens over the assumed short distance , we can replace the integrand by its value at the center and introduce a factor of

Great, we've got the potentials! What are the fields in the radiation zone (far-field)?

where we've dropped the first and last terms in accordance with our far-field approximation. Similarly,

therefore

What about the magnetic field?

The second term can be eliminated in the far-field, so

These fields are in phase, mutually perpendicular, and transverse to the direction of propagation, and the ratio of their amplitudes is , exactly as we expect from electromagnetic waves. These are actually spherical waves, not plane waves, and their amplitude decreases like as they progress. But for large r, they are approximately plane over small regions.

The energy flux is determined by the Poynting vector

The intensity is the time average over a cycle

and the total power radiated is found by integrating over a sphere of radius :