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The Maxwell stress tensor (named after James Clerk Maxwell) is a second rank tensor used in classical electromagnetism to represent the interaction between electromagnetic forces and mechanical momentum. In simple situations, such as a point charge moving freely in a homogeneous magnetic field, it is easy to calculate the forces on the charge from the Lorentz force law. When the situation becomes more complicated, this ordinary procedure can become impossibly difficult, with equations spanning multiple lines. It is therefore convenient to collect many of these terms in the Maxwell stress tensor, and to use tensor arithmetic to find the answer to the problem at hand. In the relativistic formulation of electromagnetism, the Maxwell's tensor appears as a part of the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor which is the electromagnetic component of the total stress–energy tensor. The latter describes the density and flux of energy and momentum in spacetime. ==Motivation== As outlined below, the electromagnetic force is written in terms of E and B, using vector calculus and Maxwell's equations symmetry in the terms containing E and B are sought for, and introducing the Maxwell stress tensor simplifies the result. : |- | Gauss's law for magnetism | |- | Maxwell–Faraday equation (Faraday's law of induction) | |- | Ampère's circuital law (in vacuum) (with Maxwell's correction) | |} \times \mathbf\, |3= The time derivative can be rewritten to something that can be interpreted physically, namely the Poynting vector. Using the product rule and Faraday's law of induction gives : and we can now rewrite f as : then collecting terms with E and B gives : |4= A term seems to be "missing" from the symmetry in E and B, which can be achieved by inserting (∇ • B)B because of Gauss' law for magnetism: : Eliminating the curls (which are fairly complicated to calculate), using the vector calculus identity : leads to: : |5= This expression contains every aspect of electromagnetism and momentum and is relatively easy to compute. It can be written more compactly by introducing the Maxwell stress tensor, : and notice that all but the last term of the above can be written as the divergence of this: :, As in the Poynting's theorem, the second term in the left side of above equation can be interpreted as time derivative of EM field's momentum density and this way, the above equation will be the law of conservation of momentum in classical electrodynamics. where we have finally introduced the Poynting vector, : }} in the above relation for conservation of momentum, is the momentum flux density and plays a role similar to in Poynting's theorem. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maxwell stress tensor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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