Ampère’s law

Ampère’s law, one of the basic relations between electricity and magnetism, stating quantitatively the relation of a magnetic field to the electric current or changing electric field that produces it. The law is named in honour of André-Marie Ampère, who by 1825 had laid the foundation of electromagnetic theory. An alternative expression of the Biot-Savart law (q.v.), which also relates the magnetic field and the current that produces it, Ampère’s law is generally stated formally in the language of calculus: the line integral of the magnetic field around an arbitrarily chosen path is proportional to the net electric current enclosed by the path. James Clerk Maxwell is responsible for this mathematical formulation and for the extension of the law to include magnetic fields that arise without electric current, as between the plates of a capacitor, or condenser, in which the electric field changes with the periodic charging and discharging of the plates but in which no passage of electric charge occurs. Maxwell also showed that even in empty space a varying electric field is accompanied by a changing magnetic field. In this more general form, the so-called Ampère-Maxwell law is one of the four Maxwell equations that define electromagnetism.