As I understand it, the classical source-free electric, E and magnetic, B wave equations are solved by solutions for the electric and magnetic fields of the following form: E=E0ei(k⋅x−ωt) B=B0ei(k⋅x−ωt) Naively counting the degrees of freedom (dof) at this point it would appear that the electromagnetic field has 6 dof.
However, is it correct that Maxwell's equations provide 4 constraints: k⋅E0=0k⋅B0=0 E0=−1√μ0ε0k×B0 and B0=√μ0ε0k×E0
Thus reducing the number of physical dof to 2?!
If the above is correct what do these remaining dof correspond to? Are they simply the two possible polarisation (unit) vectors ϵ1, ϵ2 that one can construct such that k⋅ϵ1=k⋅ϵ2=0 and k×ϵ1=ϵ2k×ϵ2=−ϵ1 and hence {k,ϵ1,ϵ2} form an orthornormal basis, such that the general solutions for E and B are linear combinations of ϵ1 and ϵ2?!
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