PY521,

Spring 2014 - Erramilli

Course Syllabus
PY521
Electricity and Magnetism I
Spring 2014
Instructor: Professor Shyamsunder Erramilli
Office: SCI 214
Phone: 353-1271
e-mail: shyam@bu.edu
Office hours: MW11:00 AM 12:30PM, PHO 821
Grader: TBN
Lecture: MW 9:30 AM 11:00 AM, PRB 150
Discussion: F4:00 PM 5:00 PM, SCI B58
Course Website: On backboard at learn.bu.edu
Lecture Material: Class notes in the form of a book are available on blackboard.
Required Textbook: Anupam Garg, Classical Electromagnetism in a Nutshell, Princeton
University Press. Additional notes will be supplied as needed. Note: We will be using SI
units exclusively in the course.
Supplemental Texts: The following books are not required, but it is recommended that you
and/or your study group acquire some of them to help in preparing for Electromagnetism
problems in the Comprehensive Examination. You will find them useful throughout your
physics career. The best of the list are those by Landau and Lifshitz, Stratton, and Born and
Wolf. The book by Jackson is encyclopedic and is an invaluable reference, serving as the
standard for several generations of physicists. The revised book by Schwinger et al is also
very good. The material in most of these books is dated, and does not reflect the way
Electromagnetism is used in Physics research today. But some of these books are timeless
classics, and it is well worth acquiring as many of them as you can afford.
Jackson, John David, Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd edition, Wiley, New York (1999).
Schwinger, Julian, Lester L. DeRaad Jr., Kimball A. Milton, and Wu-yang Tsai, Classical
Electrodynamics, Perseus Books, Reading, MA (1998).
Arfken, George, Mathematical Methods for Physicists, 3rd edition, Academic Press, New
York (1985). For a general comprehensive reference on Mathematical Methods. A new
edition is planned.
Born, Max, and Emil Wolf, Principles of Optics, 6th edition, Pergamon Press, Oxford
(1980).
Landau, L.D., and E.M. Lifshitz, Electrodynamics of Continuous Media, Pergamon Press,
Oxford (1960).
A good undergraduate level text for review is Griffiths, Electrodynamics. It is a very good
preview resource, with interesting problems.
For numerical methods with MATLAB, Alejandro Garcia, Numerical Methods for Physics,

 PY521, Spring 2014 - Erramilli

2nd edition Prentice Hall (2000).
For FDTD, Allen Taflove, Susan Hagness Computational Electrodynamics of Continuous
Media, 3rd edition Artech House, Boston (2005).
For Numerical methods overall, the classic text is Numerical recipes: The Art of Computing
by William H. Press, Saul A. Teukolsky, William T. Vetterling, Brian P. Flannery,
Cambridge University Press, 3rd edition (2007).
Homework: Homework problems will be assigned every week. The list of problems in the
homeworks serve as a Question Bank, and examination questions will be based closely on
the homework problems. Assignments will be due the following week in discussion section.
During weekly discussion sections, student volunteers will be called upon by the Instructor
to lead the presentation of selected homework problems. Discussion section participation will
count for 5% of the course grade. Late homework will not be accepted.
Exams: There will be one mid-term exam and a final exam. No books or notes will be
allowed during exams. PLEASE NOTE: At least 50% of the questions on the midterm and
final examination will be either identical to, or based closely on, assigned homework
problems that together form a Question Bank. This is to encourage you to work on solving
ALL the homework problems during the semester.
Grading: The course grade will be based on the following weights:
Discussion section participation - 5%
Homework - 25%
Midterm Exam: - 25% (week before Spring Break)
Final Exam Part I (Take-home):- 10%
Final Exam - 35%
Integrity and Honesty
All students are required to adhere to the Boston University rules and regulations regarding
cheating. These rules will be strictly enforced in this class and violators will be brought
before the appropriate University Committees. In particular all exams are to be the sole work
of individual students. Students may discuss with other students the various homework
assignments, but each student must write up the solutions in their own words and equations.
During the discussion sections, we will review the solutions of homework problems due the
next week.
Course Content
PY521 is a course dealing with graduate level electromagnetic theory. The topics to be
covered are listed below. The goal of this course is to teach you to make accurate calculations
of a wide variety of electromagnetic phenomena. As such, much of the course will rely on
mathematical techniques and tools. It is expected that students will have had a one year
undergraduate course on electromagnetism, to have had undergraduate math courses
involving vector calculus and partial differential equations, and to have taken PY501 (or the
equivalent) course on Mathematical Methods in Physics.
Course description on the department website: Vector and tensor analysis. Electrostatics, uniqueness,
electrostatic energy, capacitance. Boundary value problems, conformal mapping, variable separation, Greens functions.
Multipole expansion, electric polarization, atomic models, anisotropic media. Contour integration and application to
frequency-dependent dielectric constant. Dielectrics, electrostatic energy, boundary value problems.

 PY521, Spring 2014 - Erramilli

TOPICS:
1. Review: Maxwells Equations in vacuum, Garg Chapter 3
a. Electrostatics in free space
b. Conductors
c. Boundary Value Problems, Green function
2. Electrostatics in material media, Garg Chapter 13
a. Dielectrics
b. Polarization Field, Sections 81-82
c. Dielectric Permittivity and Suspectipiblity
d. Capacitance, Energy in Dielectrics, Section 89
e. Boundary Value Problems in Dielectrics, Sections 94-96
3. Magnetostatics, Garg Chapter 4 and Chapter 13
a. Magnetostatics in free space, currents and magnetic fields
b. Magnetization field, Sections 83-84
c. Magnetic Susceptibility
d. Energy in Magnetic fields
4. Frequency domain response and Time-dependent fields in materials, Chapter 18
a. Response function: Microscopic models of Polarization
b. Fourier Transforms, frequency, wave-vector
c. Drude-Lorentz model of dielectric response, Section 123
d. Frequency domain response, Greens function
5. Magnetic Materials
a. Magnetic Materials, Diamagnetism, Paramagnetism, Ferromagnetism
b. Superconductors
c. Inductors, Energy in Magnets
6. Time-dependent fields in Vaccum
a. The Wave Equation for E and B fields
b. Fourier Transform approach to solving the wave equation
c. Radiation from a non-relativistic accelerating point charge
d. Larmor formula for power radiated, frequency domain derivation
7. Time-dependent fields in Materials
a. Kramers-Kronig relations
b. Analytical properties of the dielectric function
c. Frequency dependent conductivity in metals
8. Electromagnetic Waves in Materials
a. Plane Waves in Dielectrics
b. TM and TE Polarized electromagnetic waves
c. Fresnel equations: Reflection, Refraction from dielectric interface
d. Total Internal reflection, Brewsters angle
e. Left Handed Materials with negative refractive index
9. Energy and Momentum in Dielectric Media
a. Poynting theorem
b. Brillouin expression for energy density in materials with low dispersion
c. Challenges of defining energy density in general materials
d. Abraham-Lorentz controversy: definition of momentum in Materials
10. Group Velocity, Phase Velocity in Materials
a. Dispersion in Material media
b. Group velocity, Phase velocity

 PY521, Spring 2014 - Erramilli

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.
16.

17.

c. Can the Group Velocity exceed c?

Conductors and Skin Depth
a. Quasistatic Electromagnetic fields at metal interface
b. Skin depth
c. Plasmons and Metamaterials [PY522]
Radiation and Antenna Theory
a. Time-domain approach versus Frequency Domain approach
b. Electric and Magnetic Dipole radiation
c. Antennas
Radiation and Scattering
a. Cross-section Absorption
b. Scattering from extended objects
c. Rayleigh Scattering, Mie Scattering (continue in PY522)
Waveguides and Resonators
a. Standing Waves
b. Resonant Cavities
c. Waveguides
d. Brief introduction to Fiber Optics
e. Time-domain approach versus Frequency Domain approach
f. Electric and Magnetic Dipole radiation
g. Antennas
Radiation from point charge, Time-domain
a. Retarded fields
b. Lienard-Wiechert Potentials
Special Relativity
a. Lorentz transform
b. Covariant, Contravariant tensors
c. Electromagnetic field tensor
d. Is magnetism a purely quantum relativistic phenomenon?
Introduction to PY522 [Synchrotron Radiation, Gaussian Optics]