Accelerating Current: Does Bending a Wire Produce EM Radiation?

  • Context: Undergrad 
  • Thread starter Thread starter SandeshPhy
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Accelerating Current
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
4 replies · 6K views
SandeshPhy
Messages
25
Reaction score
0
Current is simply flow of charge,
and acceleration of charged particles produces EM radiation.
Then if we bend a wire,charges(current) would be accelerated as they change direction,then a bent wire must radiate.Is it true?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
When charged particles, electrons, protons etc, are traveling in circular paths in accelerators they produce radiation sometimes know as synchrotron radiation.
Some synchrotrons are used as sources of X-rays.
 
technician said:
When charged particles, electrons, protons etc, are traveling in circular paths in accelerators they produce radiation sometimes know as synchrotron radiation.
Some synchrotrons are used as sources of X-rays.

But then even steady current moving in curved path is same as electrons moving in synchrotons.the electrons do radiate so why doesn't the current(which is simply flow of electrons)?

I am totally confused here?
 
A steady current in a circular wire has a constant charge density throughout. Maxwell's equations gives zero/constant electric field (if the wire is approx. zero charge or charged) and constant magnetic field - no radiation. An electron in a cyclotron does NOT have a constant charge density so the electric field is time dependent. For that matter the magnetic field would be more complicated too!

The way I understood the first post I imagined bending a wire as charge was flowing through it - in this case there would be radiation of course, since the magnetic field would change.