Corrigendum: An educational path for the magnetic vector potential and its physical implications

2014

Reply to Comment on ‘An educational path for the magnetic vector potential and its physical implications’

2014

In this reply we respond to the comment made by Heras on our paper (Barbieri et al 2013 Eur. J. Phys. 34 1209), in which we presented an educational path on the magnetic vector potential A, aimed at undergraduate students and pre-service physics teachers.

An educational path for the magnetic vector potential and its physical implications

2013

We present an educational path for the magnetic vector potential A aimed at undergraduate students and pre-service physics teachers. Starting from the generalized Ampere–Laplace law, in the framework of a slowly varying time-dependent field approximation, the magnetic vector potential is written in terms of its empirical references, i.e. the conduction currents. Therefore, once the currents are known, our approach allows for a clear and univocal physical determination of A, overcoming the mathematical indeterminacy due to the gauge transformations. We have no need to fix a gauge, since for slowly varying time-dependent electric and magnetic fields, the ‘natural’ gauge for A is the Coulomb o…