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Details of Magnetic field

In physics, the magnetic field is a field that permeates space and which exerts a magnetic force on moving electric charges and magnetic dipoles. Magnetic fields surround electric currents, magnetic dipoles, and changing electric fields.

When placed in a magnetic field, magnetic dipoles align their axes to be parallel with the field lines, as can be seen when iron filings are in the presence of a magnet. Magnetic fields also have their own energy and momentum, with an energy density proportional to the square of the field intensity. The magnetic field is measured in the units of teslas (SI units) or gauss (cgs units).

There are some notable specific incarnations of the magnetic field. For the physics of magnetic materials, see magnetism and magnet, and more specifically ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism. For constant magnetic fields, such as are generated by stationary dipoles and steady currents, see magnetostatics. For magnetic fields created by changing electric fields, see electromagnetism.

The electric field and the magnetic field are components of the electromagnetic field.

According to special relativity, electric and magnetic forces are part of a single physical phenomenon, electromagnetism; an electric force perceived by one observer will be perceived by another observer in a different frame of reference as a mixture of electric and magnetic forces. A magnetic force can be considered as simply the relativistic part of an electric force when the latter is seen by a moving observer.

More specifically, rather than treating the electric and magnetic fields as separate fields, special relativity shows that they naturally mix together into a rank-2 tensor, called the electromagnetic tensor. This is analogous to the way that special relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime, and mass, momentum and energy into four-momentum.