Transient electromagnetic fields about an infinitesimally long grounded horizontal electric dipole on the surface of a uniform half-space

Summary. Laplace and Bessel Transforms are used to solve for the transient behaviour of the electromagnetic fields after switching off a steady current in a grounded infinitesimal horizontal dipole on the surface of a uniformly conducting half-space. Simple analytic expressions, which are valid for times sufficiently long after the switch that displacement terms can be ignored, are obtained on the surface of the half-space for the electric field and the time derivative of the magnetic field. At the instant of switching an infinitesimally long image becomes established directly under the source dipole. It is the diffusion of this image which gives the vertical magnetic field and horizontal electric fields their transient behaviour. During the transient, there is also a decaying charge distribution on the surface.