Mathematical curls and toroidal coils

by F? E. K. Donaldson
Musing on magnetic vector potential gives an alternative view ofan old dogma.

wonder whether fellow readers go through life, like me, aware of certain propositions which they accept, reluctantly, with their heads, but reject, if one may so put it, with their gut. For me, a prime example lies in the conic sections. I feel it msquieting that, if an oblique plane section of a cylinder is an elhpse (fair enough), the oblique plane section ofa cone should be another ellipse, not an ovoid; even when, as a boy, I was given a wooden model to look at, I shll could not really believe what my eyes were showing me. Another proposition, rather less dxomforting, is that there should be no magnetic field outside a toroidal windmg. Question a lecturer of the for heavens sake school about t h s and ofcome there is no magnetic field outside a toroidal windng, he d say. Take a unit magnetic pole round a closed path in the plane of the toroid (Fig. 1) and you encircle no net current, you do no work, and so there can be no field. Its a physical necessity. Well, yes, but theres a touch of intellectual sleight-of-hand here. W h a t happens as a short solenoid becomes a long solenoid, and then the ends are bent round until they meet? Does a current transformer work backwards, and if so, how? And so on. My interest in t h s was stoked up recently in rereading that most seminal article Understandmg electromagnetism. 11: Problems with rad~ation John by Carpenter. Carpenter points out that, outside the toroid, the magnetic field B is zero, but the magnetic vector potential A is not. With a jolt, I reahsed I was confkonted with a completely new idea. Accustomed to thinlung about curl in panpipe fields, such as that shown in Fig. 2, which depicts B for a near-plane EM wave at a point P distance Y fi-om a vertically-polarised transmitting dipole, for w h c h B is given by d A / d v , it was a shock to bump into B = curl A = 0 when clearly &/dr is not 0. Upon reflection, I reahsed John Carpenter was writing about curl in circular fields, that in a Metime as an engineer I had never had to dunk

Fig. 1 A toroidal winding, A-A-A-A. The winding is supposed to be uniform right round the ring. C-C and B-B are paths which encircle no net current

Fig. 2 Curl at P in a panpipe field. The transmitting dipole and the point P lie in the vertical plane abcd. Lines of A, declining with distance from the transmitter, lie vertically in the plane. Since, for large r, dAldy is effectively zero, the curl of A, equal to B, is given by just dAldr. The ellipse indicates the circulation round P

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Fig. 3 Circular velocity field induced by stirring a viscous liquid. The velocity vectors decline with radius, and a representative point P shows anticlockwise circulation. Hence the field has 'contrary curl'

polyethylene glycol MW200 works well, stirred by a PTFE rod, 15 mrn in diameter turning at 2 rev/s (Fig. 3). The flow is laminar, and symmetry requires that the velocity vector field must be a set of concentric circles, centred on the axis of the stirrer; suppose it is drected clockwise. One sees that the velocity fills off rapidly as one moves outward from the cylinder, and that the fluid undergoes a circulation opposite to that of the cylinder-a tiny piece of paper dropped on to' the glycol is transported b o d y in the dxection of the vector field, clockwise round the stirrer, wMe performing a dignified anticlockwise rotation about some point in the centre of itself. Consider, on the other hand, the rotation of a solid disc (Fig. 4). Again the velocity vector field must be a set of concentric circles, but now the magnitude of the velocity is proportional to the radus, and all small regions of the &sc rotate about their centres, or circulate, at the same angular speed and sense as the rotation of the dsc as a whole. If circular fields w h c h fall off rapidly with radus exhibit 'contrary' circulation, whereas circular fields which increase with radius show 'consonant' circulation, it is natural to ask whether there is some rate of decline (or growth) of field with radius for which the circulation is zero; that is, to investigate the effect of n on the circulation in a general circular field of strength V = Kr". The piece of mathematics in the A p p e n h shows that there is indeed such a rate; the circulation in the field is zero when I/falls off as 1/Y.

Magnetic vector potential, A, of a toroidal winding

Reverting now to the toroidal winding, wluch may or may not have a core in it, a dametral section of the winding is shown in Fig. 5. Lines of B, where there are any, will pass perpendicularly into and out of the paper. Lines ofA wdl be concentric circles centred on the axis of the windmg, and wdl exist both inside and outside the windng. At radius TI, inside the winding, the flux encircled is B x mi2 = p,poiT x X Y ~where Tis the ~ , turns per unit length. But the flux also equals A x 2 nri. Hence

Fig. 4 Circular velocity field representing the rotation of a solid disc. The velocity vectors increase with radius, and the representative point P shows clockwise circulation. Hence the field has 'consonant curl'

Outside the winding, at r2, the flux encircled is B X nRz = prpoiT X nRz.But it also equals A X 2zr2, so

A = ?'&,poi T R2/r2 2
about curl in circular fields, and that now was as good a time as any to begin.
"This is important. The flow pattern at the surface of a relatively deep container, such as a mug of tea, is rather different and the velocity is approximately inversely proportional to the radial distance. Ifthe containingvessel is shallow, the driving torque due to the stirrer is no longer constant at all radi, because of the drag imposed by the bottom of the container. In consequence, the liquid velocities fall off much more quickly with increase in radius.

Circulation in circular fields

Suppose one is stirring a rather viscous fluid using a rotating cylinder, with axis vertical, dipping into the fluid and turned steady by a motor. A shallow" basin, 15 cm in dameter, filled to a depth of 3 cm with

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The curl of a general two-dmensional field, in r,8 co-ordmates, is given' by

However, here the field is circular, so (dA/d8) is zero. Curl reduces to just
-~

1 d(rA) r dr

Fig. 5 Section of a toroidal winding, which may or may not have a magnetic core. The wire is not shown

Short solenoids
Hence, inside the winding It might appear, at first sight, that the foregoing analysis shows that there is no magnetic field outside a short solenoid either! Not so: the short solenoid has poles which drive a flux outside the coil, in the opposite direction to that inside it. Circles ofA outside the coil embrace some of this exterior flux, and in consequence, as Y increases, A now decreases faster than l / r and the field has contrary curl. The situation is reminiscent of the scrap of paper floating on the polyethylene glycol, the contrary rotation of the paper correspondmg to the external magnetic field being in the opposite drection to the internal. It is tempting to see the stirring set-up as a model for a short solenoid, where the constant angular velocity over the cross-section of the stirrer represents the uniform B withn the windmg, and the oppositelydirected circulation in the liquid represents the external flux. The analogy is flawed, however. The circulation in the liquid is a property of the medium, i.e. the liquid, constrained by its container, whereas the curl in the space outside the solenoid is a property of the solenoid, i.e. how far away the poles are.

w h c h we knew already. The situation is analogous to the rotation of the solid dsc. A is proportional to r, as is tangential velocity in the case of the disc, and the curl is the same everywhere. Outside the winding

=o
So we can have A without any B; we see that there is no magnetic field outside the toroid because the vector potential field happens to fall off as l/r-any other rate, and there would be. From t h s point of view, the absence of external field is seen to be not so much a physical necessity but more in the nature of a mathematical fluke.

The current transformer, worked 'backwards'

To pursue electromagnetism in the tradtion of Heinrich Hertz, who did not include A in his system of electromagnetic equations3, rather than that of Maxwell, who did, can lead one into conceptual difficulties, of which the toroidal winding provides a good example. For consider a current transformer operated 'backwards'. If one excites the toroidal windmg with alternating current, how does the straight wire through the middle of the toroid (normally used as the primary) 'know' that it has to have an EMF induced in it, given that the magnetic flux is entirely confined inside the windng? The usual explanation, change of flux-linkage, is not really very satisfactory, since it reintroduces the idea of action-ata-distance, w h c h it is one of the objects of field theories to d s m i s s . Far better, surely, to follow Maxwell, and see the wire as immersed in an A field, which induces in it an EMF-gradient A.

Appendix: The effect of the rate of decline with radius of a circular field on its circulation
The circulation round a small two-dmensional region in a field of vector Vis given by the line integral of I/ round the boundary of the region. The curl vector stands normal to the plane of the region, and its magnitude is found by dwiding the circulation by the area of the region, and then allowing the region to shrink to the vanishingly small. Formally, curl V=lim(l/GS)f Ed2
6S+O

where 6 is the area of the region and dl an element of s its perimeter. Let us calculate the circulation in a convenient case, a small region bounded by two radn and two circular arcs (Fig. 6). VI at radius vis Kv", V at radus r+6r and 2 is K(rt66v)"= Krn(1+n[6r/r]).The line integral

jABi.df V

= Kr" x Y 68 = Kr(''+') 68
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Sirmlarly:

K60r(n+'){(1+n[6r/r])(1+[6r/~]) I j -

= K68~(~+~){(n+l)[6r/r]} n = -1 = 0 if

Hence, among the circular fields, I/ = K/r is a special case in that it is irrotational.
References

CARPENTER, J.: 'Understanding electromagnetism. 11: Problems mth radiation', Eng. Sci. Educ.J., October 1995,4, (5), pp.231-240 2 SCHEY,H. M.: 'Div., grad., curl and all that' (W W: Norton & Co., New York, 1973),p.84, is one possible reference 3 HENDRY, J.: 'James Clerk Maxwell and the theory of the electromagneticfield' (Adam Hilger, 1986),p.260
1

0IEE: 1997
Small region of a two-dimensional circular field centred at 0
Fig. 6

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