Maxwell coil

Magnetic field lines around a Maxwell coil

Modulus of the magnetic field around a Maxwell coil

A Maxwell coil is a device for producing a large volume of almost constant (or constant-gradient) magnetic field. It is named in honour of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

A Maxwell coil is an improvement of a Helmholtz coil: in operation it provides an even more uniform magnetic field (than a Helmholtz coil), but at the expense of more material and complexity.

Description

A constant-field Maxwell coil set consists of three coils oriented on the surface of a virtual sphere.
According to Maxwell's original 1873 design:
each of the outer coils should be of radius ${\sqrt {\frac {4}{7}}}R$, and distance ${\sqrt {\frac {3}{7}}}R$ from the plane of
the central coil of radius $R$.
The number of ampere-turns of each of the smaller coils should equal exactly ${\frac {49}{64}}$ of the middle coil.
This arrangement removes variations in magnetic field, up to its 6th-order derivative with respect to position, near the centre of the virtual sphere.

Gradient-field Maxwell coil

A gradient-field Maxwell coil is essentially the same geometry of the 3-coil configuration above, with the central coil removed to leave only the smaller two coils. If the current in one of the coils is reversed, a uniform-gradient magnetic field is produced near the centre of the two coils. Maxwell describes the use of the 2-coil configuration for the generation of a uniform force on a small test coil. A Maxwell coil of this type is similar to a Helmholtz coil with the coil distance increased from coil radius $R$ to ${\sqrt {3}}R$ and the coils fed with opposite currents.

See also

• Magnetic field
• Halbach array