Heating of a particulate by radio-frequency electric and magnetic fields

With the use of a highly symmetrical model, the heating of a spherical particulate by a predominantly radio-frequency electric field and by a predominantly rf magnetic field is solved exactly using the Maxwell equations. It is found that, in general, heating by the rf magnetic field is dominant whenever delta<a, where delta is the resistive skin depth and a is the radius of the particulate, which may either be nonmagnetic or magnetic. The known analytic scaling laws in the various regimes are recovered, from the static case to very high frequency, subject to lambda >> a, where lambda is the free space wavelength of the rf field. The analysis may form a theoretical basis in the heating phenomenology of particulates. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.