Wednesday, September 10, 2014

electromagnetism - How does a magnetic field interact with a moving charged particle?


It is known from $\mathbf F = q(\mathbf v \times \mathbf B)$ (magnetic part of Lorentz force law) how a magnetic field interacts with a moving charged particle.


Without going too deep into the matter, how does this field-particle interaction take place? Does the external magnetic field act directly on the particle to modify its trajectory, or must there be an interaction between the external field and the moving charge's own magnetic field, such that the resulting field (by superposition) "catapults" the particle into a modified trajectory? This is suggested by the figure below:



Catapult effect due to a wire's magnetic field within an external field


Can this catapulting effect, if it exists, appear separately from any direct field-on-particle effects? Misconceptions surrounding this topic appear to be rife, and am I seeking to clarify this definitively.




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