Sunday, August 23, 2015

homework and exercises - Finding a 'vector potential' such that $mathbf E = nablatimes mathbf C$ for a point charge


Supposedly, "Any divergence-free vector field can be expressed as the curl of some other divergence-free vector field" over a simply-connected domain.



So, what is one such vector potential which works for half of the Coulomb field?



To be clear, I want a vector potential whose curl equals the vector field $\mathbf R/|\mathbf R|^3$ for $z>0$ (for any $x$ and any $y$). $\mathbf R$ is the position vector $(x,y,z)$.



I know the scalar potential method is usually used instead of this, but am curious about how ugly a vector potential would look. If this gets answered, it should then be easy to answer this.




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