Demonstration of the lateral AC skin effect using a pickup coil

摘要

We present a simple demonstration of the skin effect by observing the current distribution in a wide rectangular strip conductor driven at frequencies in the 0.25-5 kHz range. We measure the amplitude and phase of the current distribution as a function of the transverse position and find that they agree well with numerical simulations: The current hugs the edges of the strip conductor with a significant variation in phase across the width. The experimental setup is simple, uses standard undergraduate physics instructional laboratory equipment, and is easy to implement as a short in-class demonstration. Our study is motivated by modeling ac magnetic near fields in the vicinity of a rectangular trace on an atom chip.