Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/ia/paper-3/11a/iv/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ia Paper 3 11A iv Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Rotational symmetry of the vector field means : rotations fixing force the field to be parallel to , and rotations between directions make its magnitude depend only on . Its flux integral over the radius- sphere is . Applying the flux identity from part (i) to the ball, with the spherically symmetric source, givesTherefore the origin-regular spherical Poisson flux law isOnly source values at occur. Changing the exterior source can change the scalar potential by an interior constant, but cannot change this radial gradient. Regularity on all of , inherited from the Poisson equation setting, matters: on a punctured domain alone an additional would have zero divergence away from the origin and would not be fixed by the local source. It is excluded here by the origin regularity needed for the ball flux identity.
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