Paper 2, Section I,
State Gauss's Law in the context of electrostatics.
A simple coaxial cable consists of an inner conductor in the form of a perfectly conducting, solid cylinder of radius , surrounded by an outer conductor in the form of a perfectly conducting, cylindrical shell of inner radius and outer radius . The cylinders are coaxial and the gap between them is filled with a perfectly insulating material. The cable may be assumed to be straight and arbitrarily long.
In a steady state, the inner conductor carries an electric charge per unit length, and the outer conductor carries an electric charge per unit length. The charges are distributed in a cylindrically symmetric way and no current flows through the cable.
Determine the electrostatic potential and the electric field as functions of the cylindrical radius , for . Calculate the capacitance of the cable per unit length and the electrostatic energy per unit length, and verify that these are related by