Dynamics of Current, Charge and Mass

Abstract

Electricity plays a special role in our lives and life. Equations of electron dynamics are nearly exact and apply from nuclear particles to stars. These Maxwell equations include a special term the displacement current (of vacuum). Displacement current allows electrical signals to propagate through space. Displacement current guarantees that current is exactly conserved from inside atoms to between stars, as long as current is defined as Maxwell did, as the entire source of the curl of the magnetic field. We show how the Bohm formulation of quantum mechanics allows easy definition of current. We show how conservation of current can be derived without mention of the polarization or dielectric properties of matter. Matter does not behave the way physicists of the 1800's thought it does with a single dielectric constant, a real positive number independent of everything. Charge moves in enormously complicated ways that cannot be described in that way, when studied on time scales important today for electronic technology and molecular biology. Life occurs in ionic solutions in which charge moves in response to forces not mentioned or described in the Maxwell equations, like convection and diffusion. Classical derivations of conservation of current involve classical treatments of dielectrics and polarization in nearly every textbook. Because real dielectrics do not behave in a classical way, classical derivations of conservation of current are often distrusted or even ignored. We show that current is conserved exactly in any material no matter how complex the dielectric, polarization or conduction currents are. We believe models, simulations, and computations should conserve current on all scales, as accurately as possible, because physics conserves current that way. We believe models will be much more successful if they conserve current at every level of resolution, the way physics does.

arXiv commentVersion 4 slight reformatting

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Molecular Mean-Field Theory of Ionic Solutions: a Poisson-Nernst-Planck-Bikerman Model
• Simulation of gating currents of the Shaker K channel using a Brownian model of the voltage sensor
• Asking Biological Questions of Physical Systems: the Device Approach to Emergent Properties
• Why engineers are right to avoid the quantum reality offered by the orthodox theory?
• What Current Flows Through a Resistor?
• Stochastic Schrödinger equations and conditional states: a general Non-Markovian quantum electron transport simulator for THz electronics
• Updating Maxwell with Electrons, Charge, and More Realistic Polarization
• Resonant tunneling diodes in semiconductor microcavities: modeling polaritonic features in the THz displacement current