Lienard-Wiechert solution revisited

Abstract

A self-consistent consideration of the Lienard-Wiechert solition is given including its heuristic deduction, which involves a future light cone (thus the lightlike propagation of information from an arbitrarily moving pointlike charge), and physical interpretation of this field via application of three distinct reference frames (of an inertial observer, then a non-inertial one retardedly co-moving with the charged source, and finally, co-moving with the electromagnetic field). In the last frame the magnetic part of the Lienard-Wiechert field identically (though not asymptotically) vanishes in all spacetime together with the Poynting vector. In the second frame, the properties of energy redistribution and radiation of the field are discussed. The dynamically caused propagation velocity of the Lienard-Wiechert electromagnetic field in a vacuum at any final distance from the source is less than that of light.