Classical Electromagnetism (ICTS Core Course

for both Int.PhD.,PhD.)

Instructor : R. Loganayagam.
February 10, 2021

Basic Info :
• Instructor name : R.Loganayagam,
• Tutors name : Ankush Chaubey, Uddepta Deka .

• Venue : Zoom
• Timings : Thursday/Saturday : 11:00 - 12:30 Hrs
Tutorials on Wednesday : 14:00 - 15:20 Hrs
• First Class (Introduction) : Thursday (10:00 - 13:00 Hrs), 11th February, 2021
Second class : Saturday (15:00 - 17:30 Hrs), 13th February, 2021
(Note unusual timing for the first/second class. )

• Drop test : Feb 24th 2021 (tentative)

• The grading policy will be based on the following weightage :

– Assignments : 35% for PhD students, 40% for I.PhD students
– Mid term Exam : 30%
– End term Exam : 30%
– Term paper (a thorough review of a topic in electromagnetism not covered in textbooks
below, see below for suggestions) : 5% Extra credit (Compulsory for PhD Students)

Note that Assignments form a central part of this course, since one of the main aims of this course
is to train students to solve problems.

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 Here are some of the candidate topics for the term paper :
1. Kinetic theory of Collisionless plasmas and Landau damping
2. Alfven’s theory of charged particle orbits and application to charge motion in Earth’s field
3. Electromagnetic theory of Rainbows/Glories

4. Physics of Lightning
5. Magneto-Hydro dynamics(MHD), anti-Dynamo theorems and dynamo models of Earth’s mag-
netic field
6. Hodgkin-Huxley model, ion channels and electrical conduction in nerves

7. Electrophysiology of electric fishes

8. Berry phase and Modern theory of polarisation
9. Chern-Simons terms/Axionic electrodynamics, topological insulators and Hall effect

10. Magnetic monopoles, Witten effect and electric-magnetic duality

11. Magnetic vortex solutions in Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity (Abelian Higgs
model)
12. Gaussian beams and Laser resonators

13. Born-Infeld electrodynamics and its solutions

14. Tensor multipole expansion for gravitational radiation
15. Electrodynamics as a conformal field theory, generating solutions using conformal transfor-
mations

If you want to write a term paper on a topic which does not appear in this list, meet me and we
can discuss the possibility.

Course contents:
The traditional topics in a course of this type include
• Static boundary value problems : Green functions, multipole methods in electrostatics/magnetostatics
• Radiation theory, multipole expansion methods and basics of scattering/diffraction
• Introduction to Special Relativity, Covariant formulation of electrodynamics

• Symmetries, Conservation laws, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism in electrodynamics

• Electromagnetic properties of matter

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There will be a drop test testing on the above topics on Feb 13th 2021(tentative). I
will require all of you to take it. If you do well, you do not have to credit the course.
If done in full detail (say as done in any of the main textbooks below), this is a lot of material
for one (or even two) semester course ! We will try to cover at least four of these five topics in some
detail. The main texts which cover this material are
• Classical Electrodynamics by J. Schwinger, L. L. DeRaad, Jr., K. A. Milton, and W-y. Tsai.
• Classical Electricity and Magnetism by Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky and Melba Phillips.
• Modern electrodynamics by A. Zangwill
• Classical Electrodynamics by J.D. Jackson
All of these are very well-written books (except perhaps Jackson which is good if you treat it as a
collection of encyclopaedia-type sections rather than a textbook). But I will not rigorously follow
any of these textbooks and I will supplement it with my own notes/other books.
I will recommend that the ICTS students who have to credit the course use their contingency
grant try to buy a personal copy of either one or both of Schwinger et.al (Indian edition cost ∼
Rs.1000) and Jackson (Indian edition cost ∼ Rs.800). You will need them for the reading/problem
sets, class/tutorials and the open book tests/exams. There is also a cheap edition of Panofsky and
Phillips (Indian edition cost ∼ Rs.700) available in case you are interested, but Zangwill alas has
no Indian edition yet and is quite expensive !
Some more modern aspects which I hope to at least touch upon briefly :
• Mathematical aspects of Gauge invariance, Charged fields, Superconductivity, Josephson junc-
tions
• Materials with electromagnetic response beyond the dielectric-magnet-conductor triad (piezo-
electrics, Hall insulators, topological insulators etc.), emergent abelian gauge fields
• Plasma physics, MHD, atmospheric/geophysical/astrophysical electric and magnetic fields
• Electrokinetics, Nernst-Planck equation, ion transport electric double layers and electric fields
in Biology (in nerves, heart, brain etc.)
But, no guarantees !

Prerequisites:
I am assuming you are familiar with the following topics which are standard during a first course
in electromagnetism :
• Vector analysis: gradient, divergence, curl, divergence theorem, Stokes’ theorem.
• Electrostatics : Poisson equation, Boundary value problems, image problems, multipole ex-
pansion.
• Electric field and potential in matter, polarisation.
• Magnetostatics, magnetic field in matter, magnetisation.

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 • Electrodynamics: Faraday’s law of induction
• Maxwell’s equations/Electromagnetic waves in free space and in matter.
• Geometric/Ray Optics , wave optics.
This is a short summary of the detailed pre-requisites discussed during our meeting in November.
If you want the detailed version, ask your tutors.
The basic texts that cover these pre-requisites are
• Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 2 by Feynman, Leighton and Sands
• Electromagnetic Fields and Energy by Hermann A. Haus and James R Melcher

• Introduction to electrodynamics by David J.Griffiths

• Classical Electrodynamics by Greiner
• Electricity and magnetism by Edward M.Purcell and David M.Morin
If you feel that in a particular topic you are under prepared I will strongly recommend to look at
the relevant chapters in these books. You should be roughly be able to read and comprehend first
75% of these books. Let me know if that is not the case.
There will be a set of preliminary tests (take home) so that I can have an idea of
where the class stands regarding these topics.
Apart from these, it is good to revise various things from previous courses

• Classical mechanics : Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, Canonical transformation, Noether theorem

• Quantum mechanics : Rotations, Spherical harmonics/theory of angular momentum, Scat-
tering theory of waves
• Statistical mechanics : Basic kinetic theory, Partition functions etc.

• Mathematical physics : Fourier/Laplace transforms, delta functions, complex analysis (espe-

cially residue theorem and contour integrals), PDEs (especially second order PDEs like wave
equation, Poisson equation, Heat equation), Green functions, variable separation, Sturm-
Liouville theory, Bessel functions, Legendre polynomials etc.

Policy on online classes/privacy :

The online nature of the course that has been forced on us by these pandemic times. While it
has opened up new opportunities, its predominant effect has been a negative effect on the student
interactions/feedback and assessment of student progress. A recognition of these limitations and
a commitment to overcome them (both on the side of students as well as the instructor/tutors) is
necessary for a course like this to succeed. I hope the students take a pro-active role.
In order to encourage frank assessments and discussions, this course will be restricted to present
ICTS graduate students. Especially, it is expected that the Zoom links and video recordings of
classes would be access-restricted and I expect the students to respect the online privacy of their
peers in keeping it so.

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Course Philosophy :
Broad motivation :
I think of the theoretical physics graduate course curriculum as being divided into two halves : first,
an ‘un-compromisable’ core minimum of five subjects in which a student should have a thorough
critical and analytic skills. These are
1. Classical mechanics (at the level of the standard textbook by Goldstein or Landau-Lifshitz
Vol. 1)
2. Quantum mechanics (at the level of the standard textbook ”Modern Quantum Mechanics”
by Sakurai)
3. Statistical mechanics (at the level of the standard textbook by M. Kardar or R. K. Pathria)
4. Mathematical Physics (at the level of the standard textbook by K. F. Riley, M. P. Hobson
and S. J. Bence )

5. Classical electrodynamics (at the level of standard textbooks mentioned above)

I feel that it is very difficult to go very far in theoretical physics without a deep and thorough
understanding of these subjects. To work on a research problem, this needs to be supplemented by
3 to 4 courses in the appropriate research area.
My reason for this opinion is as follows : each of these core subjects introduce a particular
worldview which has been very successful in our understanding of physical reality. And these
viewpoints recur again and again in theoretical physics (in fact, I would define a theoretical physics
problem as one where this happens). So, let me begin by describing the worldview of classical
electrodynamics.

Importance :
First some quick history. It is often said that electrodynamics was historically born out of unification
of two forces - electric and magnetic. In fact, I think a more historically precise statement is that
it combines six different phenomena known to our human ancestors :

1. Magnets, magnetic compass and magnetism of the earth. Magnets and the fact that they
seem to act on each other at a distance mystified and fascinated the ancients. As a first force
which was recognised to act at a distance, magnetism became the template on which say the
Newtonian theory of universal gravitation was constructed.
2. Lightning and atmospheric phenomena like Aurora Borealis. (Eventually, the ionosphere)

3. Energy behind biological dynamics. e.g., forces applied by humans via their nerves and
tissues (including brain and heart). The ancient notions of ‘life force’, ‘vital energy’ etc.,
including talks about Ase (Nigeria), Qi (China), Manitou (North American tribes), elan vital
(Europe), some notions of Prana (India) are all pre-Maxwellian theories of phenomena which
are now known to be electric in their origin. Many ancient theories and arguments about soul
have eventually been subsumed under modern electro-physiology.

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 4. The forces born out of materials and chemicals including the forces behind elasticity,
friction and chemical reactions.It is human fascination with friction that led to the dis-
covery of fire. The fascination with fire and transformations induced by it is in turn at the
heart of alchemy.
5. Electrostatic forces obtained by rubbing various materials against each other.

6. Phenomena associated with light and optics in general.

In a remarkable turn of history filled with a long array of accidental experimental discoveries, these
forces and energies were understood to be one and the same. This is perhaps the first lesson of
electrodynamics : much of the physical reality we see around us have common origins. Textbook
history of physics tends to somewhat overemphasise the history of gravity and mechanics. But I
believe there is a way of looking at the history of physics and even the entire history of humanity
as mirrored in the history of electromagnetism.
What are the other lessons of electrodynamics ? They include
• Convenient description of reality is in terms of fields. These fields have a physical reality of
their own, e.g., they carry energy and momentum. The fields evolve according to certain par-
tial differential equations with appropriate initial conditions/boundary conditions.
• The macroscopic forces except gravity are all described in fact by a pair of electric and
magnetic fields acting between charges and currents. The charges produce fields and the
fields in turn affect charges.

• Often, fields leave the charges to travel far in terms of waves. These waves can undergo
reflection, refraction, interference and diffraction in various media.
• In vacuum, these waves can travel very fast (in fact, with the maximum possible speed) and
are thus relativistic.
• In media, the collective behaviour of charges leads to an effective/averaged description
whereby the forces are screened/enhanced/modified into something entirely new. The waves
disperse in a frequency dependent way and their effective speed of propagation also
becomes frequency dependent.
• At temperatures much below their frequencies, these waves start behaving like particles thus
leading to quantum behaviour.

• When the reverse effect of particles behaving like waves is taken into account, one then forms
stable bound states/novel phases (like atoms, molecules, solids, liquids etc.).
The reader will notice that these highlighted ideas are absolutely fundamental to how a physicist
(especially a theoretical physicist) views the world. It is a way of thinking, analysing and arguing
about physical phenomena and one of the primary aims of an electrodynamics course is to train a
student to do that.
Many textbooks give the false idea that classical electromagnetism is a finished subject. This
is NOT true. The four oldest problems of electrodynamics : that of magnetic phases of matter,
that of dynamics of geo-magnetic field, that of lightning, that of electric/magnetic field generation
and detection by animals and plants are all active areas of research. Historically, these problems

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motivated the pioneers of electromagnetism from Gilbert to Galvani to Gauss, from Franklin to
Faraday. Despite centuries of work, they still throw up puzzles which baffle us. For some unknown
reason, many books pretend that such questions do not exist any more.
This is apart from the new challenges which were unknown few decades ago. The electric/magnetic
response of Hall systems from 1980s has brought into physics surprisingly sophisticated mathemat-
ical ideas. The theory of ferro-electrics (called Modern Theory of Polarization) was really under-
stood only in early 1990s. The theory of insulators (usually thought of as boringly simple) threw
up surprises over the last decade whose resolution has led to the theory of topological insulators.
Ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic order, of course, dominate so much of modern condensed
matter and continue to befuddle us. Emergent ‘new’ kind of electromagnetic fields and the physics
of low dimensional electromagnetism continue to puzzle and fascinate us. The physics of current
conduction within semi-conductors underlie much of modern electronic world. So much of the mod-
ern world is built on our understanding of electromagnetism that I feel it ridiculous to even attempt
at describing how much.
This course also serves as a stepping stone towards more advanced courses of the graduate
curriculum. To name a few : quantum and statistical field theory, astrophysics (via plasma physics),
condensed matter physics, General relativity, particle physics (more generally high energy theory
including string theory). In reality, it is almost impossible to find something in physics where the
tools and viewpoint of electromagnetism are not employed at least indirectly. To summarise, this
is a very important course.