Electromagnetic waves

Although the wave equations of Maxwell’s theory have been studied for about a hundred years (or two hundred, if one includes the special cases which also arise for the vibrating strings and pipes treated by Daniel Bernoulli, D’Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange), the subject is far from closed. Emphasis and interests have shifted in the course of time, but the spectrum of activities has remained about the same. Some individuals are concerned with electromagnetics per se, and deal primarily with problems relating to the generation, transmission, and reception of electromagnetic radiation; others are interested in mathematical aspects of the initial value and boundary value problems of the equations; still others take wave physics in general as their field, and regard electromagnetics as one discipline for which the phenomena may be relatively directly associated with theory.

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