Explicit Definitions for the Electromagnetic Energies in Electromagnetic Radiation and Mutual Coupling

Abstract

It is still difficult to accurately evaluate the reactive electromagnetic energy and the radiative electromagnetic energy of a radiator, because there are no explicit expressions for them. This paper proposes to borrow the energy concept in the charged particle theory and separate the total electromagnetic energy of a radiator into three parts: a Coulomb–velocity energy, a radiative energy and a macroscopic Schott energy. Consequently, the Poynting vector is considered to include a real radiative power flow by the radiative energy and a pseudo power flow caused by the fluctuation of the reactive energy. The energies involved in the electromagnetic mutual coupling are separated in a similar way. All energies are defined with explicit expressions in which the vector potential plays an important role. The time domain formulation and the frequency domain formulation of the theory are consistent with each other. The theory is verified with the Hertzian dipole. Numerical examples demonstrate that this theory may provide proper interpretations for electromagnetic radiation and mutual coupling problems.