Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Electromagnetism

The secret life of the dipole

Nature volume 387, pages 558–559 (1997)Cite this article

We are familiar with the acceleration of charged particles, such as protons and electrons, by uniform electromagnetic fields. But neutral particles can be accelerated by uniform fields too, if they possess a magnetic dipole1,2. Some consequences and the possibility of observing this force are the focus of a new study3.

The force on a magnetic dipole in an electromagnetic field has been studied for more than 100 years. The expression found in textbooks depends on the spatial gradient of the applied magnetic field (F = ∇(μ.B), where μ is the magnetic moment and B is the magnetic field). If we imagine the magnetic dipole to be an infinitesimal current loop, then F may be understood as the net force resulting from the different Lorentz forces acting on different parts of the loop.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: A neutron beam moving through a sequence of cells containing alternating electric fields.
Figure 2: The x and y components of the mean kinetic momentum of the neutrons in Fig. 1 without (dotted lines) and with (solid lines) the additional force f.

References

  1. Anandan, J. Phys. Lett. A 138, 347–352 (1989).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Anandan, J. in Proc. Int. Symp. Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Tokyo, August 1989 (eds Kobayashi, S. et al.) 98-106 (Phys. Soc. Japan, 1990).

  3. Wagh, A. & Rakhecha, V. C. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1399–1403 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Anandan, J. & Hagen, C. R. Phys. Rev. A 50, 2860–2864 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 29208, South Carolina, USA

    Jeeva S. Anandan

  2. University of Oxford, UK

    Jeeva S. Anandan

Authors
  1. Jeeva S. Anandan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Anandan, J. The secret life of the dipole. Nature 387, 558–559 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/42372

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/42372

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing