[Physics] Conductor with a charge inside a cavity

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Suppose we have a spherical insulator charged with $Q$ inside a spherical conducting shell charged with $-2Q$.

My textbook says that:

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But I cant figure out why is that.

All I know that as a conductor in electrostatic equilibrium the field inside it is zero. So if we take a concentric gaussian surface with a radius $b<r<c$ we see that the total charge inside it has to be zero. And since the charge lies on the surface of the shell the inner walls have to be charged with $-Q$.

Best Answer

We can see why the conductor doesn't contribute to the electric field inside a cavity by using the fact that the electric field is conservative in electrostatics. $\vec E$ being conservative implies that $\oint_C d\vec s\cdot \vec E = 0$ for any closed curve $C.$

Constructing a Gaussian surface $S$ around the cavity yields $\iint_S d\vec A\cdot \vec E = 0$, but that doesn't mean there aren't equal amounts of positive and negative charges on the surface of the cavity, necessarily. We can only conclude that the net charge in the cavity is zero.

Imagine there was some nonzero field inside a cavity, beginning on some positive charge and ending on the negative charges. Then, pick a closed path $\Gamma$ that passes through the cavity with portion $\gamma_1$, but also passes through the "meat" of the conductor with portion $\gamma_2$ and joins up on itself such that $\gamma_1 + \gamma_2 = \Gamma$. The contribution to the integral is zero over $\gamma_2$ since the field in the "meat" of a conductor is zero. It follows that the line integral of the field $\vec E$ over $\Gamma$ is $$ \oint_\Gamma d\vec s\cdot \vec E = \int_{\gamma_1}d\vec s\cdot \vec E + \int_{\gamma_2}d\vec s\cdot \vec E = \int_{\gamma_1}d\vec s\cdot \vec E \ne 0, $$ since the field $\vec E$ is nonzero over $\gamma_1$. But this is clearly a contradiction of the fact that $\oint_C d\vec s\cdot \vec E = 0$ in electrostatics. We are forced to conclude that if there is any field in the cavity of a conductor that it is due to the presence of other bodies.

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