[Physics] Divergence of a field and its interpretation

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The divergence of an electric field due to a point charge (according to Coulomb's law) is zero. In literature the divergence of a field indicates presence/absence of a sink/source for the field.

However, clearly a charge is there. So there was no escape route.

To resolve this, Dirac applied the concept of a deltafunction and defined it in an unrealistic way (the function value is zero everywhere except at the origin where the value is infinity). However the concept was accepted and we became able to show that

$\nabla \cdot \vec E=0$, everywhere except at the origin.

Conclusion: The source of the electric field exists although its divergence is zero everywhere except at the source point.

In the case of the magnetic field we are yet to observe its source or sink. However, the zero divergence of this field implies that no magnetic charge exists and since we don't have any real magnetic monopole at hand, there is no question of finding the field at the source point.

Isn't this a double standard? Do we really need to find a non-zero divergence of a field for its source to exist?

Best Answer

This become a lot clearer if you consider the integral forms of Maxwell's equations. We start with Gauss' Law \begin{equation} \nabla\cdot\vec{E} = \frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0} \end{equation} If we integrate this over some volume $V$ and apply Gauss' Divergence Theorem we find that the left hand side gives \begin{align} \int_V\mathrm{d}^3\vec{x}\;\nabla\cdot\vec{E}= \int_{\partial V}\mathrm{d}^2\vec{S}\cdot \vec{E}\end{align} where $\partial V$ is the boundary of $V$. While the right hand side gives \begin{equation} \int_V\mathrm{d}^3\vec{x}\;\frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0}= \frac{Q}{\epsilon_0}\end{equation} Where $Q$ is the total charge enclosed in $V$. Combining the two gives \begin{equation}\int_{\partial V}\mathrm{d}^2\vec{S}\cdot \vec{E} = \frac{Q}{\epsilon_0}\end{equation} I words the electric flux entering any closed region is equal to the charge contained in that region, i.e. electric field lines only start and stop on charges.

Conversely we can apply this equation over an arbitrary volume, $V$. In particular we can choose a volume so small that $\nabla\cdot\vec{E}$ and $\rho$ are approximately constant, so so we can recover the differential form of Gauss' Law.

Now let's see what these equation's look like for a point charge, $q$, at the origin. For any volume $V$ that does not include the origin, $Q = 0$, so by taking $V$ small we find that $\nabla\cdot\vec{E} = 0$. If however we consider a volume which does include the origin then $Q = q$ and the integral of $\nabla\cdot\vec{E}$ is non-zero. If we let the volume of $V\rightarrow 0$ we find that $Q$ remains constant as long as the origin is still contained, so \begin{equation}\frac{Q}{V}\rightarrow\rho\rightarrow \infty\end{equation} So $\rho$ must diverge for a point charge! Further more this behaviour where the value of an integral is given by the value of the integrand at a point is the definition of the Dirac delta. If you find this unsatisfying you can push back to the question of whether point charges actually exist, but this is an empirical, rather than theoretical question. (we currently have little reason to think that fundamental particles are not pointlike.)

A similar analysis can be done with magnetic fields, where we find that \begin{equation} \int_{\partial V}\mathrm{d}^2\vec{S}\cdot \vec{B} = 0\end{equation} for any volume $V$