Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 61 3 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Apply the shearing-wave ansatz to each disturbance. Acting on its phase givesThus a spatially uniform amplitude system exists whenFor a nonzero horizontal wavenumber , the razor-thin disk Poisson kernel follows from . The potential decays above and below the sheet as . Integrating across the midplane gives the jump , henceSubstitute this potential and the phase evolution into the linearized equations. The barotropic shearing-wave gravitational amplitude system isThe self-gravity sign is attractive and opposes the pressure response. The uniform mass density shift requires its own gravitational reference and is not obtained by dividing by .