Introduction to Electrodynamics

A strong foundation in electrodynamics is essential to work in so many fields that inevitably, your classes hold students with varied backgrounds and a broad range of interests. To meet all of their needs and motivate them toward advanced studies, they need a text that is clearly written, provides a reasonable level of detail, and develops both their computational abilities and physical intuition.

Developed through the extensive teaching experience of its authors, Introduction to Electrodynamics meets those goals. While moving smoothly through all of the standard material, the authors also plant seeds that will spark interest in and lay the groundwork for future work in a number of specialties. Their chapter on dielectric media introduces concepts integral to condensed matter physics, discussions on the motion of charged particles do the same for plasma and high energy physics, and an entire chapter devoted to wave guides forms a foundation for work in fiber optics.

Special features of this text include an early introduction to the use of the ubiquitous time-dependent Green's function and a focus on developing students' physical intuition. The authors take particular care in their treatments of special relativity and the theory of radiation from a moving charge, for which they derive the Linard-Wiecher potentials and Larmor's formula.