How Do You Calculate the Electric Potential of a Polarized Half-Cylinder?

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The discussion focuses on calculating the electric potential of a polarized half-cylinder with a polarization density of ## \vec P=P_0 \hat z##. The charge densities on the semi-circular surfaces are defined as ## \sigma_u=-\sigma_d=P_0 ##. The integral required for the potential calculation involves transforming from cylindrical to spherical coordinates, which presents challenges due to the complexity of the integral. The user seeks assistance in performing this transformation, noting that software like Ansoft Maxwell can be used for potential calculations of similar charge distributions.

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ShayanJ
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Consider a cylinder(height ##l##, radii a) cut in half by a plane parallel to its axis(z-axis). Now imagine it has a polarization density ## \vec P=P_0 \hat z## and so its two semi-circular surfaces have bound charge densities ## \sigma_u=-\sigma_d=P_0 ##. I want to calculate the electric potential of these charge densities at an arbitrary point of space.
The charge elements is clearly (using cylindrical coordinates) ## dq=\sigma \rho d\varphi d\rho ##(with ## 0\leq \rho \leq a ## and ##0\leq \varphi \leq \pi ##).
Now I should find out the distance between an arbitrary point on the semi-circular surface of the cylinder and an arbitrary point in space(##(R,\phi,Z)##) which can be written as ##\sqrt{R^2+Z^2+\rho^2+(\frac l 2)^2-2\sqrt{(R^2+Z^2)(\rho^2+(\frac l 2)^2)} \cos\gamma} \ \ ## where ##\gamma## is the angle between the two position vectors. We can write(using spherical coordinates) ## \cos\gamma=\cos \theta \cos\vartheta +\sin\theta \sin\vartheta \cos(\varphi-\phi) ##. So I can put this into the distance formula and write the integral I should calculate. But the problem is, now I have an integral w.r.t. cylindrical coordinates that contains some spherical coordinates. So I should either transform the integral to spherical coordinates or write the spherical coordinates in terms of cylindrical coordinates. I figured that the second option turns the integral into an intractable mess so I want to pursue the first option(Then I can use Legendre polynomials and spherical harmonics to do the integral). I calculated the Jacobian of the transformation from cylindrical to spherical coordinates(its ## \frac 1 r ## where ##r=\sqrt{\rho^2+(\frac l 2)^2}## is the radial component of the spherical coordinates of the point on the cylinder ). But I don't know how should I do the transformation. I'm confused here. Can anyone help?
Thanks
 
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If I wanted to know potentials of such charge distributions I would use software package like Ansoft Maxwell.
 

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