Ph. D. Qualifying Exam Electrodynamics October 3, 2012 Directions: Work six of the following eight problems. 1.

A plane electromagnetic wave traveling in the z direction is circularly polarized with positive helicity. The three-vector potential in the Coulomb A gauge (such that the electric eld E = t ) is given by 1 A = A0 ( x + iy ) ei(kzt) , 2 where A0 is a (possibly complex) constant, x and y are unit vectors in the x and y directions, respectively, k is the wave number, and = kc, where c is the speed of light. (a) A point particle of charge q and mass m is accelerated by this wave. Assume the elds are small enough that the motion is non-relativistic such that the particles speed v is much less than c. Show that the magnetic force on the particle in this case is much less than the electric force. (b) Solve for x(t), the particles position as a function of time. You may assume the particle is at the origin (x = y = z = 0) at time t = 0. 2. A point charge with charge q and mass m is attached to the end of a massless, rigid rod of length R. The other end of the rod is attached to a xed point about which the charge can rotate freely. As a consequence, the charge moves in a circle of xed radius R in the x y plane. The charge is initially moving with speed v0 c. The charge slows down due to emission of radiation. Compute the speed v as a function of time. Assume that the charge loses only a small amount of radiation per orbit so that 2 , where is the angular frequency of the charge in its orbit. 3. An insulating circular ring of radius R lies in the XY plane, centered at the origin. It carries a linear charge density 0 = 0 cos , where 0 is a constant and is the angle in the x y plane measured from the positive x axis. (a) Make a sketch of this charge distribution using several + and signs to indicate where the charge is most positive or negative. Is this an electric dipole, a magnetic dipole, or something else? Give an answer and calculate the x, y, and z components of the multipole moment vector. (b) At time t = 0 the ring is set spinning about the z axis with constant angular velocity . Is the outgoing wave in the far eld region along each of the coordinate axes linearly polarized or circularly polarized? In the case of linear polarized waves, please give the direction of the E vector.

4. A positive point charge q is xed a distance a above a horizontal grounded conducting x y plane. An equal negative charge q can be moved along the perpendicular dropped from q to the plane. (a) At what distance b from the plane should q be placed for the total force on it to be zero? (b) What is the surface charge density, (x, y )? Express your answer in terms of a, b, q, x and y .

Figure 1: Figure for Problem 5a and Problem 5b.

Figure 2: Figure for Problem 5c.

5. Two concentric conducting spheres of inner and outer radii a and b, respectively, carry charges +Q and Q, respectively, as shown in gure 1. (a) Determine the electric eld everywhere between the spheres. (b) Calculate the total electrostatic energy. (c) Determine the electric eld if the empty space is half-lled by a hemispherical shell of dielectric (dielectric constant ), as shown in gure 2.

Figure 3: Figure for Problem 6.

6. A beam of white light is incident at an angle on two parallel glass plates separated by an air lm a distance t thick, as shown in gure 3. The reected light is admitted into a prism spectrometer. At what wavelengths in the spectrum are dark lines seen? Take the index of refraction of air to be n = 1. 7. A laboratory frame has static elds E and B. Find a Lorentz frame in which both elds vanish or prove that such a frame does not exist. 8. The charge density of a hydrogen atom in the ground state is given by (r) = q 2r/a e a3

where a is the Bohr radius and q is electrons charge. (a) Calculate the electric eld of the electron cloud Ee (r). It may help to know that

ex x2 dx =
0

2 2 1 1 e 2 e 2 e , 3

where and are positive, real constants. (b) Calculate the atomic polarizability of the hydrogen atom.