Tuesday, 16 December 2014

electromagnetism - Special conformal transformations and image charges


Let us consider a grounded conducting sphere with radius r and a point charge e at a distance R>r from the center of the sphere. For simplicity, we can choose the sphere to be centered at the origin and the charge to be on the z axis at (0,0,R).


This problem can be solved by the method of image charges, i.e. by replacing the sphere with another point charge q=er/R at (0,0,r2/R). Indeed, the resulting electrostatic potential Φ(x,y,z)=e4π[x2+y2+(z+R)2]1/2er4πR[x2+y2+(z+r2/R)2]1/2 solves the Poisson equation ΔΦ=eδ(x,y,z+R) with boundary condition Φ=0at |x|=r. Furthermore, the charge surface density on the sphere is given by (Φρ)ρ=r=er4π(R/r)21(r2+2rRcosθ+R2)3/2 in spherical coordinates ρ,θ,ϕ.


We might also tackle this problem by exploiting the conformal symmetry electromagnetism: the action d4xgFμνFμνd4xgAμjμ is invariant under local Weyl rescalings gμνΩ2gμν if AμAμ,jμΩ4jμ. Performing a special conformal transformation with parameter bμ=(0,0,0,1/r), i.e. t=tσ(t,x),x=xσ(t,x),y=yσ(t,x),z=z(x2t2)/rσ(t,x) with σ(0,x)=12z/r+(x2t2)/r2 we see that the sphere in the un-primed space corresponds to the plane z=r2 in the primed space. The corresponding conformal factor can be read off the transformation rule g00=(tt)2g00=g00σ2(0,x)at t=0. Hence, gμν=σ2gμν and the Weyl rescaling needed to go back to the original Minkowski metric gμν is gμνσ2gμν. This gives Ω=1/σ.


Now I would like to find the rule for transforming the charge e and its image q=er2/R. Assuming that a point-like charge e at x0 scale as eσ(0,x0)1/2 under conformal transformations, ee=eσ(0,0,0,R)1/2=e1+R/r and we get a charge e at z=rR/(r+R); then, the image q of e with respect to the plane is q=e=e1+R/r at z=r2/(R+r). And the indeed the matching is correct, because the conformal mapping of q according to the above rule is precisely qq=qσ(0,0,0,r2/R)1/2=e1+R/r at z=r2/(R+r).



My question is, why is the above transformation rule for e hold? Naively I would have expected j0(x)=eδ(xx0)Ω4tteδ(x(x)x0)=σ4σ1σ3eδ(xx0) but this would mean that they do not transform...




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