6.5.3. What are the surface charge density and the electrostatic pressure at the boundary between two fields with magnitudes $E$ and $2E$? What about $E$ and $-2E$? In the second case, the surface charge density is three times larger. Why then is the electrostatic pressure the same in both cases?
Solution
Boundary conditions of two fields: \begin{equation} D_{2n}-D_{1n}=\sigma \end{equation}
where $\sigma$ is a free charge at the boundary.
$D_{1n}$ and $D_{2n}$ are normal components of electric flux density which are equal:
To find the pressure we could consider a thin cylindrical shell at the boundary of two media.Consider a portion of a cylinder with charge $\sigma\Delta S$.Let the field of this part be $E_0$ and that of the remaining part be $E_0'$.From the superposition we know that:
\begin{equation} 2E=E_0+E_0' \end{equation}
\begin{equation} E=E_0'-E_0 \end{equation}
Adding eq(5) and eq(6) we get:
\begin{equation} E_0'=\frac{3}{2}E \end{equation}
The total force acting on the portion is:
\begin{equation} \Delta F=\sigma \Delta SE_0'=\frac{3\varepsilon_0E^2}{2}\Delta S \end{equation}
So the pressure at the interface between two media is: