Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-2/3/c/solution

Reflect the physical source across , writing . Its radius is still , and its spherical image is . The Dirichlet Green function inside a hemisphere is
Explicitly this four-source method of images is
Both terms vanish on the spherical cap. On the flat equatorial disc, reflection equates the two physical-source distances and also the two image-source distances, so both pairs cancel. The reflected physical source lies in the lower half-ball and the two inverted images lie outside the sphere. Consequently the only source in the upper half-ball is , with the correct coefficient:
The Dirichlet uniqueness for the Poisson equation then identifies this as the required Green function.

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