Trapping and Compressing Electric Fields

Abstract

THE problems of diffusion of electromagnetic field into a conducting medium and the consequent skin-effect have been studied since the last century¹. The interaction between a magnetic field and a medium of infinite conductivity, and its implications in laboratory as well as cosmological media, received considerable attention from many authors, in recent years, after the pioneering work of Alfven², and others. Experiments, with liquid metals³ and laboratory plasmas⁴, have shown that a magnetic field may be frozen in a medium and that it may be trapped and compressed. The assumption of infinite conductivity requires the electric field to be zero, to avoid infinite currents. Moreover, the vast literature on the subject is mainly concerned with cosmological problems where, under usual conditions, the infinite conductivity approximation is good enough^2,5. Consequently, no thought has been given, it seems, to the possibility of analogous behaviour of electric fields.