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Main Authors: Loran, Farhang, Moghimi-Araghi, Saman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00458
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author Loran, Farhang
Moghimi-Araghi, Saman
author_facet Loran, Farhang
Moghimi-Araghi, Saman
contents The method of image charges is a powerful and elegant technique in electrostatics, commonly used to determine the electric field generated by point charges near conductors of various shapes. While standard problems focus on single charges interacting with conductors, the behavior of multipoles in such configurations has received comparatively less attention, particularly beyond the well-studied case of a flat plane. In this paper, we explore the image formation of electric dipoles and quadrupoles near a conducting sphere and uncover a wonderful result: the image of a given multipole is not necessarily of the same type. Instead, alongside the expected multipole image, the resulting image configuration also includes lower-order multipole contributions. This finding broadens the understanding of electrostatic images and offers new insights into the interaction of multipoles with conducting boundaries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_00458
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Does a Curved Mirror Honestly Reflect Your Identity? A Study of Multipole Images in Front of a Grounded Sphere
Loran, Farhang
Moghimi-Araghi, Saman
Classical Physics
The method of image charges is a powerful and elegant technique in electrostatics, commonly used to determine the electric field generated by point charges near conductors of various shapes. While standard problems focus on single charges interacting with conductors, the behavior of multipoles in such configurations has received comparatively less attention, particularly beyond the well-studied case of a flat plane. In this paper, we explore the image formation of electric dipoles and quadrupoles near a conducting sphere and uncover a wonderful result: the image of a given multipole is not necessarily of the same type. Instead, alongside the expected multipole image, the resulting image configuration also includes lower-order multipole contributions. This finding broadens the understanding of electrostatic images and offers new insights into the interaction of multipoles with conducting boundaries.
title Does a Curved Mirror Honestly Reflect Your Identity? A Study of Multipole Images in Front of a Grounded Sphere
topic Classical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00458