The Fourier transform method can be applied to obtain electromagnetic knots, which are solutions of Maxwell equations in vacuum with non-trivial topology of the field lines and especial properties. The program followed in this work allows to present the main ideas and the explicit calculations at undergraduate level, so they are not obscured by a more involved formulation. We make use of helicity basis for calculating the electromagnetic helicity and the photon content of the fields.
In null electromagnetic fields the electric and the magnetic field lines evolve like unbreakable elastic filaments in a fluid flow. In particular, their topology is preserved for all time. We prove that for every link $L$ there is such an electromagnetic field that satisfies Maxwell's equations in free space and that has closed electric and magnetic field lines in the shape of $L$ for all time.
We revisit a newfound construction of rational electromagnetic knots based on the conformal correspondence between Minkowski space and a finite $S^3$-cylinder. We present here a more direct approach for this conformal correspondence based on Carter-Penrose transformation that avoids a detour to de Sitter space. The Maxwell equations can be analytically solved on the cylinder in terms of $S^3$ harmonics $Y_{j;m,n}$, which can then be transformed into Minkowski coordinates using the conformal map. The resultant "knot basis" electromagnetic field configurations have non-trivial topology in that t…
We find all analytic SU(2) Yang-Mills solutions on de Sitter space by reducing the field equations to Newton's equation for a particle in a particular 3d potential and solving the latter in a special case. In contrast, Maxwell's equations on de Sitter space can be solved in generality, by separating them in hysperspherical coordinates. Employing a well-known conformal map between (half of) de Sitter space and (the future half of) Minkowski space, the Maxwell solutions are mapped to a complete basis of rational electromagnetic knot configurations. We discuss some of their properties and illustr…
We prove the Volume Conjecture for the relative Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants proposed in [29] for all pairs (M,K) such that M\K is homeomorphic to the complement of the figure-8 knot in S^3 with almost all possible cone angles.
Solving the multi-frequency electromagnetic inverse source problem by the Fourier method
School of Mathematics, Jilin University(吉林大学数学学院);Department of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology(哈尔滨工业大学数学系);Department of Mathematics, Southern University of Science and Technology(南方科技大学数学系)
Null solutions to Maxwell's equations in free space have the property that the topology of the electric and magnetic lines is preserved for all time. In this article we connect the study of a particularly relevant class of null solutions (related to the Hopf fibration) with the existence of pairs of volume preserving Legendrian fields with respect to the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere. Exploiting this connection, we prove that a Legendrian link can be realized as a set of closed orbits of a non-vanishing Legendrian field corresponding to the electric or magnetic part of a null solu…
In this article we apply a discrete action principle for the Vlasov--Maxwell equations in a structure-preserving particle-field discretization framework. In this framework the finite-dimensional electromagnetic potentials and fields are represented in a discrete de Rham sequence involving general finite element spaces, and the particle-field coupling is represented by a set of projection operators that commute with the differential operators. With a minimal number of assumptions which allow for a variety of finite elements and shape functions for the particles, we show that the resulting varia…