The 1988 Nobel Prize winner establishes the subject's mathematical background, reviews the principles of electrostatics, then introduces Einstein's special theory of relativity and applies it to topics throughout the book.

This is a re-issued and affordable printing of the widely used undergraduate electrodynamics textbook.

Practically all of modern physics deals with fields—functions of space (or spacetime) that give the value of a certain quantity, such as the temperature, in terms of its location within a prescribed volume. Electrodynamics is a comprehensive study of the field produced by (and interacting with) charged particles, which in practice means almost all matter. Fulvio Melia's Electrodynamics offers a concise, compact, yet complete treatment of this important branch of physics. Unlike most of the standard texts, Electrodynamics neither assumes familiarity with basic concepts nor ends before reaching advanced theoretical principles. Instead this book takes a continuous approach, leading the reader from fundamental physical principles through to a relativistic Lagrangian formalism that overlaps with the field theoretic techniques used in other branches of advanced physics. Avoiding unnecessary technical details and calculations, Electrodynamics will serve both as a useful supplemental text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and as a helpful overview for physicists who specialize in other fields.

In this book Carver Mead offers a radically new approach to the standard problems of electromagnetic theory. Motivated by the belief that the goal of scientific research should be the simplification and unification of knowledge, he describes a new way of doing electrodynamics—collective electrodynamics—that does not rely on Maxwell's equations, but rather uses the quantum nature of matter as its sole basis. Collective electrodynamics is a way of looking at how electrons interact, based on experiments that tell us about the electrons directly. (As Mead points out, Maxwell had no access to these experiments.) The results Mead derives for standard electromagnetic problems are identical to those found in any text. Collective electrodynamics reveals, however, that quantities that we usually think of as being very different are, in fact, the same—that electromagnetic phenomena are simple and direct manifestations of quantum phenomena. Mead views his approach as a first step toward reformulating quantum concepts in a clear and comprehensible manner. The book is divided into five sections: magnetic interaction of steady currents, propagating waves, electromagnetic energy, radiation in free space, and electromagnetic interaction of atoms. In an engaging preface, Mead tells how his approach to electromagnetic theory was inspired by his interaction with Richard Feynman.

An engaging writing style and a strong focus on the physics make this graduate-level textbook a must-have for electromagnetism students.

What happens to light when it is trapped in a box? Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics addresses a fascinating question inphysics: what happens to light, and in particular to itsinteraction with matter, when it is trapped inside a box? With theaid of a model-building approach, readers discover the answer tothis question and come to appreciate its important applications incomputing, cryptography, quantum teleportation, andopto-electronics. Instead of taking a traditional approach thatrequires readers to first master a series of seemingly unconnectedmathematical techniques, this book engages the readers' interestand imagination by going straight to the point, introducing themathematics along the way as needed. Appendices are provided forthe additional mathematical theory. Researchers, scientists, and students of modern physics can referto Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics and examine the field thoroughly.Several key topics covered that readers cannot find in any otherquantum optics book include: * Introduction to the problem of the "vacuum catastrophe" and thecosmological constant * Detailed up-to-date account of cavity QED lasers andthresholdless lasing * Examination of cavities with movable walls * First-principles discussion about cavity QED in opencavities * Pedagogical account of microscopic quantization indielectrics Complementing the coverage of the most advanced theory andtechniques, the author provides context by discussing thehistorical evolution of the field and its discoveries. In thatspirit, "recommended reading," provided in each chapter, leadsreaders to both contemporary literature as well as key historicalpapers. Despite being one of many specialties within physics, cavityquantum electrodynamics serves as a window to many of thefundamental issues of physics. Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics willserve as an excellent resource for advanced undergraduate quantummechanics courses as well as for graduate students, researchers,and scientists who need a comprehensive introduction to the field.

Learning Electrodynamics doesn’t have to be boring What if there was a way to learn Electrodynamics without all the usual fluff? What if there were a book that allowed you to see the whole picture and not just tiny parts of it? Thoughts like this are the reason that No-Nonsense Electrodynamics now exists. What will you learn from this book? Get to know all fundamental electrodynamical concepts —Grasp why we can describe electromagnetism using the electric and magnetic field, the electromagnetic field tensor and the electromagnetic potential and how these concepts are connected.Learn to describe Electrodynamics mathematically — Understand the meaning and origin of the most important equations: Maxwell’s equations & the Lorentz force law.Master the most important electrodynamical systems — read step-by-step calculations and understand the general algorithm we use to describe them.Get an understanding you can be proud of — Learn why Special Relativity owes its origins to Electrodynamics and how we can understand it as a gauge theory. No-Nonsense Electrodynamics is the most student-friendly book on Electrodynamics ever written. Here’s why. First of all, it's is nothing like a formal university lecture. Instead, it’s like a casual conservation with a more experienced student. This also means that nothing is assumed to be “obvious” or “easy to see”.Each chapter, each section, and each page focusses solely on the goal to help you understand. Nothing is introduced without a thorough motivation and it is always clear where each formula comes from.The book contains no fluff since unnecessary content quickly leads to confusion. Instead, it ruthlessly focusses on the fundamentals and makes sure you’ll understand them in detail. The primary focus on the readers’ needs is also visible in dozens of small features that you won’t find in any other textbook In total, the book contains more than 100 illustrations that help you understand the most important concepts visually. In each chapter, you’ll find fully annotated equations and calculations are done carefully step-by-step. This makes it much easier to understand what’s going on in.Whenever a concept is used which was already introduced previously, there is a short sidenote that reminds you where it was first introduced and often recites the main points. In addition, there are summaries at the beginning of each chapter that make sure you won’t get lost.

Several significant additions have been made to the second edition, including the operator method of calculating the bremsstrahlung cross-section, the calcualtion of the probabilities of photon-induced pair production and photon decay in a magnetic field, the asymptotic form of the scattering amplitudes at high energies, inelastic scattering of electrons by hadrons, and the transformation of electron-positron pairs into hadrons.

Covers the theory of electromagnetic fields in matter, and the theory of the macroscopic electric and magnetic properties of matter. There is a considerable amount of new material particularly on the theory of the magnetic properties of matter and the theory of optical phenomena with new chapters on spatial dispersion and non-linear optics. The chapters on ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism and on magnetohydrodynamics have been substantially enlarged and eight other chapters have additional sections.

In this book we display the fundamental structure underlying classical electro dynamics, i. e. , the phenomenological theory of electric and magnetic effects. The book can be used as a textbook for an advanced course in theoretical electrodynamics for physics and mathematics students and, perhaps, for some highly motivated electrical engineering students. We expect from our readers that they know elementary electrodynamics in the conventional (1 + 3)-dimensional form including Maxwell's equations. More over, they should be familiar with linear algebra and elementary analysis, in cluding vector analysis. Some knowledge of differential geometry would help. Our approach rests on the metric-free integral formulation of the conservation laws of electrodynamics in the tradition of F. Kottler (1922), E. Cartan (1923), and D. van Dantzig (1934), and we stress, in particular, the axiomatic point of view. In this manner we are led to an understanding of why the Maxwell equa tions have their specific form. We hope that our book can be seen in the classical tradition of the book by E. J. Post (1962) on the Formal Structure of Electro magnetics and of the chapter "Charge and Magnetic Flux" of the encyclopedia article on classical field theories by C. Truesdell and R. A. Toupin (1960), in cluding R. A. Toupin's Bressanone lectures (1965); for the exact references see the end of the introduction on page 11. .