I am wondering if my physical intuition regarding the following situation is correct.
Suppose we have an ordinary neutral conductor (say an ordinary piece of metal). We now turn on an electric field. We can assume the field has constant strength and all the field lines point in the same direction. After a brief moment, we turn off this electric field. Will the temperature of the conductor go up?
I think the answer should be yes. It's basically the same thing as having a wire and running a brief current through it, the internal resistance would cause the wire to heat up. The mechanism for this in case of the above conductor would be that the electric field causes a small separation of charge. Once the electric field is turned off, the potential energy of the charge separation then gets converted to kinetic energy as the charges reorient themselves, increasing the temperature. Also, it's more or less how a microwave heats up things.
Is this intuition correct? Is there a specific name for this kind of effect? Or would one just call this resistance heating?
Thanks in advance!
