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Plane waves can propagate in any direction. Any superposition of these waves, for all
possible
and
are not
and
, let's pick
so that e.g.:
(9.17)
which are plane waves travelling to the right or left along the
,
(9.19)
and
equation. Any waveform that preserves its shape and travels along the
-axis at speed
is a
solution to the one dimensional wave equation (as can be verified directly, of course). How
boring! These particular harmonic solutions have this form (verify this).]
If there is dispersion (velocity a function of frequency) then the fourier superposition is no longer
stable and the last equation no longer holds. Each fourier component is still an exponential, but
their velocity is different, and a wave packet spreads out it propagates. We'll look at this shortly
to see how it works for a very simple (gaussian) wave packet but for now we'll move on.
Note that
and
where
, and
are constant vectors (which may be complex, at least for the moment).
to these solutions in the HHE leads us to:
(9.20)
above, with
, which is the most familiar form of the solution (but not the only one)!
This has mostly been ``mathematics'', following more or less directly from the wave equation.
The same reasoning might have been applied to sound waves, water waves, waves on a string, or
``waves''
of nothing in particular. Now let's use some physics in the spirit suggested in
the last section of the Syllabus and see what it tells us about the particular electromagnetic
waves that follow from Maxwell's equations turned into the wave equation. These waves all
satisfy each of Maxwell's equations separately.
For example, from Gauss' Laws we see e.g. that:
(9.21)
or (dividing out nonzero terms and then repeating the reasoning for
):
(9.22)
that
and
are perpendicular to
, the
cancels,
and
is real9.4
If
is real (and hence a unit vector), then we can introduce three real, mutually orthogonal unit
vectors
and
(9.25)
where
and
have the same dimensions and that the magnitude of the electric field is greater than that of the
magnetic field to which it is coupled via Maxwell's Equations by a factor of the speed of light in
the medium, as this will be used a lot in electrodynamics.
These relations describe a wave propagating in the direction
. This follows
from the (time-averaged) Poynting vector (for any particular component pair):
(9.27)
(9.28)
(9.29)
(9.30)
remains real!) As an exercise, figure out the complex vector of your choice such that
(9.31)
Since I don't really expect you to do that (gotta save your strength for the real problems later) I'll
work it out for you. Note that this is:
(9.32)
(9.33)
(9.34)
So,
must be orthogonal to
example:
(9.35)
works, as do infinitely more More generally (recalling the properties of hyberbolics functions):
(9.36)
where the unit vectors are orthogonal should work for any
Thus the most general
such that
is
.
(9.37)
where (sigh)
and
is complex, the
This inhomogeneous plave wave exponentially grows or decays in some direction while
remaining a ``plane wave'' in the other (perpendicular) direction.
Fortunately, nature provides us with few sources that produce this kind of behavior
(Imaginary
remember that it is there for when you run into it in field theory, or mathematics, or catastrophe
theory.
Instead we'll concentrate on kiddy physics descriptions of polarization when
vector, continuing the reasoning above.
is a real unit