MATHS FOR SPECIAL PHYSICS

ELIZABETH ANGSTMANN
There is quite a lot of maths that you need to be able to do to use Maxwells equations
etc. You may have seen some of this previously in a mathematics course but if you have
not it is summarised here for you.
Dot and cross products
(1) A B = scalar = A
x
B
x
+ A
y
B
y
+ A
z
C
z
Another way you can write this is (you do not have to know this but I nd it a useful
way of thinking of it):
(2) A B =
3

i=1
3

j=1

ij
A
i
B
i
where
ij
is the Kroneker delta symbol, dened as:

ij
=

1 if i = j
0 if i = j.
(3) AB = vector
(4) (AB)
z
= A
x
B
y
A
y
B
x
(5) (AB)
x
= A
y
B
z
A
z
B
y
(6) (AB)
y
= A
z
B
x
A
x
B
z
This next equation you do not need to know but you may nd it an easier way of thinking
of cross products.
(7) AB =
3

i=1
3

j=1
3

k=1

ijk
e
i
A
j
B
k
In this equation e
i
is a unit vector in the i direction and
ijk
is the Levi-Civita symbol
dened as:

ijk
=

+1 if (i, j, k) is (1, 2, 3), (2, 3, 1), or (3, 1, 2)

1 if (i, j, k) is (1, 3, 2), (3, 2, 1), or (2, 1, 3)
0 otherwise: i = j or j = k or k = i.
1
2 ELIZABETH ANGSTMANN
(8) AA = 0
(9) A (AB) = 0
(10) A (BC) = (AB) C
(11) A(BC) = B(A A) C(A B)
Vector operator,
You will also need to be able to use:
(12) f(x, y, z) =
f
x
x +
f
y
y +
f
z
z
(13)

2
f
xy
=

2
f
yx
For some scalar eld (eg. temperature) we can write:
(14) T = (
T
x
,
T
y
,
T
z
)
this is called del-T or the gradient of T or grad T but the important point is that
it is a way of taking the derivative of a scalar eld and ending up with a vector eld. If
R = (x, y, z) then we can write (12) and (14) as:
(15) T = T R
is actually a vector operator:
(16) = (

x
,

y
,

z
)
Let h be a vector eld, then the divergence of h is dened as:
(17) h =
h
x
x
+
h
y
y
+
h
z
z
As this is a dot product the result is a scalar.
The curl of h is the cross product of the operator and h.
(18) h = (
h
z
y

h
y
z
,
h
x
z

h
z
x
,
h
y
x

h
x
y
)