The electromagnetic fields of moving dipoles

Abstract

Abstract Recent papers by J. R. Ellis and the author contain formulae for the fields of moving dipoles which are expressed in rather different forms in the two papers, and it appears that the author's results are more general than Ellis's. Here, the results are re-derived from a consideration of the Hertzian six-vector potential for a distribution of moving dipoles, and a comparison is made with the previous forms. It is found that Ellis's results are essentially as general as the author's. The expressions for the potentials and the field tensors are treated as weak functions in Temple's sense, and very few restrictions have to be imposed on the dipole moments and velocities, which may be expressed either as functions of coordinate time or as functions of proper-time.