Abstract
We analyze the dynamic toroidal multipoles and prove that they do not have an independent physical meaning with respect to their interaction with electromagnetic waves. We analytically show how the split into electric and toroidal parts causes the appearance of non-radiative components in each of the two parts. These non-radiative components, which cancel each other when both parts are summed, preclude the separate determination of each part by means of measurements of the radiation from the source or of its coupling to external electromagnetic waves. In other words, there is no toroidal radiation or independent toroidal electromagnetic coupling. The formal meaning of the toroidal multipoles is clear in our derivations. They are the higher order terms of an expansion of the multipolar coefficients of electric parity with respect to the electromagnetic size of the source.