In the space between the plates of a capacitor, the changing electric flux produces:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Displacement current
While a capacitor charges, a conduction current flows in the connecting wires but no charge crosses the gap between the plates. Maxwell showed that the changing electric flux in the gap acts as a current, the displacement current, which continues the conduction current and produces a magnetic field just as a real current does.
\( \displaystyle i_d = \varepsilon_0\,\frac{d\phi_E}{dt} \)
This makes Ampere’s circuital law consistent for a loop whose surface passes between the plates.
Why the other options are incorrect
Option (2) Conduction current — Incorrect. A conduction current needs charges moving through a conductor; no charges cross the insulating gap between the plates.
Option (3) Stationary electric field — Incorrect. The flux is changing, so the field between the plates is changing too; a stationary field would give no current of any kind.
Option (4) Eddy current — Incorrect. Eddy currents are conduction currents induced in a bulk conductor by a changing magnetic flux, not by a changing electric flux in empty space.
NCERT (2026-27):
Displacement Current – “… If we generalise this law by adding to the total current carried by conductors through the surface, another term which is \( \varepsilon_0 \) times the rate of change of electric flux through the same surface, the total has the same value of current \( i \) for all surfaces.”
Displacement Current – “… The current carried by conductors due to flow of charges is called conduction current. The current, given by Eq. (8.4), is a new term, and is due to changing electric field (or electric displacement, an old term still used sometimes). It is, therefore, called displacement current or Maxwell’s displacement current.”