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Energy Density (magnetic field)

Description

Energy density is the amount of energy stored in a given system or region of space per unit volume or mass, though the latter is more accurately termed specific energy. Often only the useful or extractable energy is measured, which is to say that chemically inaccessible energy such as rest mass energy is ignored. In cosmological and other general relativistic contexts, however, the energy densities considered are those that correspond to the elements of the stress–energy tensor and therefore do include mass energy as well as energy densities associated with the pressures described in the next paragraph.

Energy is needed to generate a magnetic field both to work against the electric field that a changing magnetic field creates and to change the magnetization of any material within the magnetic field. For non-dispersive materials this same energy is released when the magnetic field is destroyed so that this energy can be modeled as being stored in the magnetic field.

Magnetic fields store energy. In a vacuum, the (volumetric) energy density (in SI units) is given by the formula shown here.

The solution will be in Joules per cubic metre. In the context of magnetohydrodynamics, the physics of conductive fluids, the magnetic energy density behaves like an additional pressure that adds to the gas pressure of a plasma.

Related formulas

Variables

Uenergy density of magnetic fields (joule/m3)
μ0magnetic constant
Bmagnetic field (tesla)