The short-circuit concept used in field equivalence principles

In field equivalence principles, electric and magnetic surface currents are specified and considered as impressed currents. Often the currents are placed on perfect conductors. It is shown that these currents can be treated through two approaches. The first approach is decomposition of the total field into partial fields caused by the individual impressed currents. When this approach is used, it is shown that, on a perfect electric (magnetic) conductor, impressed electric (magnetic) surface currents are short-circuited. The second approach is to note that, since Maxwell's equations and the boundary conditions are satisfied, none of the impressed currents is short-circuited and no currents are induced on the perfect conductors. Since all currents and field quantities are considered at the same time, this approach is referred to as the total-field approach. The partial-field approach leads to alternative formulations for computations of the total field. This is not the case for the total-field approach