Parallel-plate and spherical capacitors in Born-Infeld electrostatics: An analytical study

Abstract

In 1934, Max Born and Leopold Infeld suggested and developed a nonlinear modification of Maxwell electrodynamics, in which the electrostatic self-energy of an electron was a finite value. In this paper, after a brief introduction to Lagrangian formulation of Born-Infeld electrodynamics with an external source, the explicit forms of Gauss's law and the electrostatic energy density in Born-Infeld theory are obtained. The capacitance and the stored electrostatic energy for a parallel-plate and spherical capacitors are computed in the framework of Born-Infeld electrostatics. We show that the usual relations $U=\frac{1}{2}{C}_{{}_{\text{Maxwell}}}(△\varphi {)}^2$ and $U=\frac{q^2}{2C_{{}_{\text{Maxwell}}}}$ are not valid for a capacitor in Born-Infeld electrostatics. Numerical estimations in this research show that the nonlinear corrections to the capacitance and the stored electrostatic energy for a capacitor in Born-Infeld electrostatics are considerable when the potential difference between the plates of a capacitor is very large.

12 pages, 2 figures