Equivalence of Two Methods to Solve Static Electromagnetic Potentials

Abstract

In electromagnetic statics, the standard procedure to determine the electric scalar potential or magnetic vector potential in a bounded space is to solve Poisson's equation subject to certain boundary conditions. On the other hand, as a direct generalization of Coulomb's law or Biot-Savart law, the static electromagnetic potentials may also be obtained by directly integrating the electric charge or current distributions over the region (either volume or surface) where they are spread out. What is the relation between these two formalisms? In this article, we prove that they are in fact equivalent to each other in mathematics. Examples are also presented to explicitly show the validity of this equivalence.