Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2002/ia/paper-3/12a/c/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ia Paper 3 12A c Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Assume is an interior point and choose small enough that its closed ball lies inside . Apply Green's second identity to the punctured region , where the potential is smooth and satisfies Laplace equation. Since , this givesThe crucial orientation is the outward unit normal vector of the punctured region: on the inner sphere, it is , pointing toward . Consequently and . The inner boundary term becomesWriting and , its first part tends to by continuity. The second part is because the gradient of is bounded near , and hence tends to zero.
The omitted volume term also tends to zero: for bounded near , its absolute value is bounded by a constant times . Thus the limiting integral exists, and rearranging the outer boundary terms givesThis is Green's third identity for the Poisson equation with the stated sign convention. It retains both boundary terms; no homogeneous boundary condition has been assumed. The punctured-domain calculation accounts for the singular source without incorrectly applying the regular divergence theorem through .
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