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The Electromagnetic Fields of a Spinning Spherical Shell of Charge

We consider the problem of a rotating charged spherical shell of radius a carrying an axially symmetric distribution of charge. We give the interior and exterior solutions to this problem for arbitrary zonal dependence of the surface charge distribution and for arbitrary time dependence of the rotation rate. Surprisingly, these general solutions involve the rotation rate and its time integrals, and do not depend on the time derivatives of the rotation rate. We present numerical solutions for various distributions of surface charge, and we consider the case where the sphere instantaneously goes from rest to rotating at a constant rate. For a time 2a/c after this instantaneously spin-up, the sphere radiates even though it is rotating at a constant rate. In this time interval, the sphere radiates away an amount of energy exactly equal to the magnetic energy stored in the static fields a long time after the sphere has been spun up. Animations of our solutions can be found at http://web.mit.edu/viz/spin .