ponderomotiveadj.

1881 S. P. Thompson in London, Edinb., & Dublin Philos. Mag. 5th Ser. 12 17 The force with which one quantity of electricity acts upon another quantity of electricity may be regarded either as an electromotive force or as a true ponderomotive force; for it tends to move electricity, and also to move matter, if matter be associated with the electricity.

1921 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 99 115 The ponderomotive force of an electromagnetic field on matter containing electric charges is [etc.].

1934 I. M. Freeman tr. G. Joos Theoret. Physics xv. 296 The current in the segment, the magnetic field, and the ponderomotive force must form a right-handed orthogonal system in this order (Fleming's left-hand rule).

1964 S. K. Runcorn in A. E. M. Nairn Probl. Palaeoclimatol. 192 The varying fields generated in the core..will also generate induced currents in the mantle, and the ponderomotive forces resulting from these will cause angular acceleration and deceleration of the mantle on time-scales of 100 years.

1988 Nature 26 May 297/2 The time average of the high-frequency forces felt by the particle—the ponderomotive force—is derivable as the gradient of a ponderomotive potential which is proportional to the light intensity divided by its frequency.

1988 Physics of Fluids 31 3079 Filaments driven by the thermal mechanism tend to cluster together and produce greater large scale nonuniformities in the laser illumination than the ponderomotively driven filaments.

2004 Physical Rev. A. 69 51402-1 Measuring the energies of electrons ponderomotively accelerated out of the focus.