Ampère's Circuital Law

Law relating the integrated magnetic field around a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop.

Specifications & Metrics

symbol

∇ × B = μ₀J

Core Principles & Analysis

• The law was inspired by Hans Christian Ørsted's 1820 discovery that an electric current generates a magnetic field.
• James Clerk Maxwell published the law in 1855, based on an analogy to hydrodynamics in his paper 'On Faraday's Lines of Force'.
• In 1865 Maxwell generalized the law to account for time-varying electric currents by introducing the displacement current term.

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Sources

• Wikipedia: Ampère's circuital law