Electrodynamics of Continuous Media

3 credits · Graduate

This course presents the fundamentals of electromagnetic interactions in deformable continuous media. It develops the background necessary to understand various modern technologies involving MEMS devices, sensors and actuators, plasmas, and a wide range of additional phenomena. The emphasis of this course is on fundamentals, beginning with Maxwell's equations in vacuum, the ether relations and their extension to electromagnetic interactions in materials. The treatment is general within the limits of nonrelativistic physics and accommodates coupling with mechanical and thermal effects. The topics discussed are all developed at a general level including the effects of finite deformations. Various linear models, which are especially useful in applications, are developed through specialization of general theory. This course will be of interest to students in engineering, physics, and applied mathematics.