Ampere's equation

In physics, more particularly in electrodynamics, Ampère's equation describes the force between two infinitesimal elements of electric-current-carrying wires. The equation is named for the early nineteenth century French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère.

Rather than giving Ampère's original infinitesimal equation, which is not without problems, we will describe two common cases obtained by integration: a system consisting of two straight wires and a system of two closed loops. Since the integrals over disputed terms in Ampère's infinitesimal equation vanish, the equations for these integrated systems are generally accepted and, moreover, are in full agreement with experiment.

Electromagnetic units

Equations will be given in two common systems of electromagnetic units (SI and Gaussian) and to that end we define the constant k as follows,

$k={\begin{cases}{\displaystyle {\frac {\mu _{0}}{4\pi }}}&{\hbox{for SI units}}\\\\{\displaystyle {\frac {1}{c^{2}}}}&{\hbox{for Gaussian units}}.\end{cases}}$

Here μ₀ is the magnetic constant (also known as vacuum permeability). The quantity c is the velocity of light in the vacuum 299 792 458 m s⁻¹ exactly) .

Two straight, infinite, and parallel wires

Consider two wires, one carrying an electric current $\scriptstyle i_{1}$, the other $\scriptstyle i_{2}$. Both currents are constant in time; the wires are infinite, straight, and parallel. If the wires are a distance r apart, the force (per length l of wire) between them is,

${\frac {F}{l}}=2k{\frac {i_{1}i_{2}}{r}}.\,$

The force is attractive if the currents run in the same direction and repulsive if they flow in opposite direction. This equation is used to define the SI unit of current A (ampere). Take wires in vacuum, r = 1 m, l = 1 m, F = 2 ⋅ 10⁻⁷ N , and equal currents, then the currents are equal to 1 A. Note that in SI units this implies that μ₀ = 4π ⋅ 10⁻⁷ N/A².

Illustration to the force between two closed current-carrying loops

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Two loops

Let $\scriptstyle i_{1}$ and $\scriptstyle i_{2}$ be electric currents constant in time. They run in separate loops (closed curves) C₁ and C₂, see figure on the right, where all quantities are defined. The total force between two loops is given by the double path integral over the loops

$\mathbf {F} _{12}=-ki_{1}i_{2}\oint _{C_{1}}\oint _{C_{2}}{\frac {(d\mathbf {l} _{1}\cdot d\mathbf {l} _{2})\,\mathbf {r} _{12}}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}}.\qquad \qquad \qquad (1)$

Alternative expression

One can find on the internet the following expression for the force between two electric-current-carrying loops:

$\mathbf {F} _{12}=ki_{1}i_{2}\oint _{C_{1}}\oint _{C_{2}}{\frac {d\mathbf {l} _{1}\times (d\mathbf {l} _{2}\,\times \mathbf {r} _{12})}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}},\qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad (2)$

instead of the simpler expression in Eq. (1). Here the multiplication signs (×) indicate vector products. The integrand (expression under the integral) follows from the Biot-Savart-Laplace equation for the magnetic induction B(r₁) due to a segment of the second loop. Use of this field, in the magnetic term of the Lorentz force acting on the current in segment dl₁, gives the integrand of Eq. (2).

The labeling of the segments being arbitrary, one would expect the same force (in absolute value) if the labels 1 and 2 are interchanged, or in other words, Newton's third law $\scriptstyle \mathbf {F} _{12}=-\mathbf {F} _{21}$ to hold. This is not the case, the integrand in equation (2) is non-symmetric under interchange of labels 1 and 2 and hence the integral also appears to be non-symmetric. However, after integration the expression becomes antisymmetric (changes sign under interchange of 1 and 2) and hence satisfies Newton's third law.

To see this we note that the force in Eq. (2) has in fact two contribution, as follows from a result well-known in vector analysis,

${\frac {d\mathbf {l} _{1}\times (d\mathbf {l} _{2}\,\times \mathbf {r} _{12})}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}}={\frac {(d\mathbf {l} _{1}\cdot \mathbf {r} _{12})\,d\mathbf {l} _{2}}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}}-{\frac {(d\mathbf {l} _{1}\cdot d\mathbf {l} _{2})\,\mathbf {r} _{12}}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}}.$

The second contribution gives an integral that is obviously equal to Eq. (1), which is manifestly antisymmetric under interchange of labels (the dot product does not change, the vector r₁₂ changes sign). We will show that the first contribution vanishes after integration over a closed curve.

Write

${\frac {\mathbf {r} _{12}}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|^{3}}}=-{\boldsymbol {\nabla }}_{1}\left({\frac {1}{|\mathbf {r} _{12}|}}\right)\equiv -\mathbf {A} ,$

where A is a short hand notation. Applying Stokes' theorem, we find that the first contribution becomes

$-ki_{1}i_{2}\oint _{C_{2}}\left[\oint _{C_{1}}(d\mathbf {l} _{1}\cdot \mathbf {A} )\,\right]d\mathbf {l} _{2}=-ki_{1}i_{2}\oint _{C_{2}}\left[\iint _{S}({\boldsymbol {\nabla }}_{1}\times \mathbf {A} )\cdot d\mathbf {S} _{1}\,\right]d\mathbf {l} _{2}.$

It is well-known in vector analysis that

${\boldsymbol {\nabla }}_{1}\times {\boldsymbol {\nabla }}_{1}\Phi =0$

for any scalar function Φ and in particular for Φ ≡ 1/|r₁₂|. Hence the first contribution to the force of Eq. (2) vanishes.

See also

• Biot-Savart's law
• Ampere's law