Coordinate surfaces and sketch. Adding and subtracting the defining relations gives and . Since , we have . For , eliminate to obtain
This is a parabolic cylinder parallel to the axis, opening towards negative , with cross-sectional vertex and focus at the origin. Similarly, gives
a parabolic cylinder opening towards positive , with vertex and the same focus. The degenerate surface is the half-plane ; gives . Constant gives the horizontal planes .
Thus the requested cross-sections consist of , , , and the two horizontal half-axes. The parabolas of the two families meet orthogonally.
Figure 1.
The requested parabolic coordinate curves in the xy plane
. Blue curves have u squared equal to one or two; orange curves have v squared equal to one or two. The thick horizontal rays are the degenerate zero levels. All parabolas share the origin as focus. Details.
Signed coordinates. Take and choose the sign of to agree with away from . Then the Cartesian coordinates are
Every coordinate triple gives exactly one point. For , and have the same sign. A fixed signed selects the upper or lower half of its parabolic cylinder; the entire cylinder corresponds to fixed . On the cut , the two values represent the same point of the negative half-axis. This boundary identification is unavoidable: there even when , so the sign prescription is understood by approaching from either side of the cut. The interior gives a unique coordinate chart off that half-axis.
Orthogonality and metric. Differentiate the position vector:
The pairwise dot products vanish. Their lengths give the scale factors of orthogonal coordinates and hence the Riemannian metric:
These are parabolic cylindrical coordinates. The differential calculation is regular for ; the axis is the coordinate singularity where the two planar tangent vectors vanish.
Laplacian. Put . The physical components of the gradient of a -independent scalar field are . Applying the divergence formula cancels the two equal scale factors of orthogonal coordinates inside the derivatives:
Therefore, away from the coordinate singularity,
For , the positive constant- surfaces in elliptic cylindrical coordinates satisfy
They are confocal elliptic cylinders with focal lines . For a generic fixed , eliminating gives
Because , a fixed selects the half-branch with the signs of and fixed by and . These are hyperbolic cylinders. The degenerate surface is , , extended in . At the cross-sections are the two exterior horizontal rays; at they are vertical half-axes.
Figure 1.
Confocal elliptic and hyperbolic coordinate curves
. Original cross-section with focal points marked. Ellipses are constant-u curves and the hyperbola half-branches are constant-v curves; extruding in z gives their coordinate surfaces. Details.
Differentiate the position vector to get the coordinate tangent vectors
Their pairwise dot products vanish. Their squared lengths are , and one. This proves orthogonality and gives the scale factors of orthogonal coordinates:
The Riemannian metric is . Away from the focal lines, divide the coordinate tangent vectors by their lengths to obtain the local orthonormal unit vectors . For physical vector field components , the formulas for vector calculus in elliptic cylindrical coordinates are
The gradient of a scalar function has components . Apply the divergence formula to this gradient; Laplace's equation becomes
The formulas apply where ; the focal lines require a limit or another coordinate chart.
Expand the divergence of . The cross terms cancel, leaving . The divergence theorem gives Green's second identity,
Use the Green function convention . Integrating over a bounded domain containing yields . Thus zero Neumann boundary data would be incompatible with this unit Dirac delta source. A suitable Neumann Green function with constant boundary flux instead has , where is the boundary area. Substituting , , gives
The last term is an undetermined constant. The data must obey the Neumann Poisson problem compatibility condition , obtained by integrating the original equation. Under this condition an additive constant in cancels from the first two terms.
For the upper half-space, reflect the source to . The method of images with equal-sign sources gives
The reflected singularity lies outside the domain; on the two normal derivatives cancel, so . Its total unit flux passes through a large hemisphere at infinity, where . This is why the bounded-domain condition on the boundary flux cannot be applied to the infinite plane alone.
With zero interior source and the given point boundary source, the boundary representation is . The terms at infinity vanish for this resulting field. Therefore
To check the singular boundary condition, is the Poisson kernel for the upper half-space. Its integral over a horizontal plane is one and its mass concentrates at the origin as , giving in the distributional sense. This is the Neumann point source on a half-space boundary.
Compare the total differential with and . The orthonormality of the coordinate basis gives the gradient in orthogonal coordinates:
To obtain the curl without neglecting the variation of the basis vectors, write . The curl of a gradient vanishes, and the product rule gives
Likewise because the system is right-handed. This cross product has zero divergence: . The divergence product rule applied to now gives
Cyclic permutation and linearity give the general component formulas described by divergence and curl from orthogonal coordinate gradients:
and
In cylindrical coordinates, . The specified field has no dependence or component, so
It is an irrotational vector field for every exactly when . This statement is local to an angular coordinate chart: the component proportional to is not single-valued under .
Away from the origin, . Hence the curl of a gradient gives . Its divergence is the Laplacian of the radial coordinate, which in spherical coordinates is
Equivalently, differentiating in Cartesian coordinates gives .
For a differentiable vector field in Cartesian coordinates, the divergence and curl are
with summation over repeated indices. In components the curl is . The contraction of two Levi-Civita symbols and the product rule give
Recognizing the directional derivatives gives the curl of a cross product identity
The divergence is . Over the cube , each squared-coordinate term has integral , while the other two coordinate integrals have length one. Thus
Compute the surface flux separately. On , the outward normal is and , giving flux . On , the normal is , so , again giving . The two faces similarly give each, and the two faces give each. All six face integrals therefore give
The independently evaluated values agree, verifying the divergence theorem for this field and cube.
For a twice continuously differentiable vector field in Cartesian coordinates, the curl and divergence are
Put . Using the Levi-Civita symbol, the Kronecker delta contraction and the product rule,
The last term vanishes because the divergence of a curl is zero: the symmetric mixed derivatives contract against an antisymmetric symbol. Thus the curl of a cross product identity becomes
For orthogonal coordinates with position vector , the scale factors of orthogonal coordinates and local unit vectors are
Orthogonality gives , and right-handedness fixes . In cylindrical coordinates, , so
The radial vector points away from the axis; the azimuthal vector is tangent in the direction of increasing ; is the Cartesian positive direction. The azimuthal basis is undefined on the coordinate axis itself.
Figure 1.
Cylindrical unit vectors relative to Cartesian axes, viewed from positive z
. Details.
For the axial velocity profile, the cylindrical coordinates formula gives
The associated cross product is
This field has only a radial component depending on , so its curl is zero. Also . The identity above therefore yields
In fact both directional derivatives vanish: the first differentiates only in the azimuthal direction, and the second differentiates only in the direction. All physical vector fields extend smoothly through , despite the coordinate-basis singularity.
Using Cartesian coordinates, the Levi-Civita symbol and the Einstein summation convention, the constant-vector assumption gives
Recognizing the divergence and directional derivative proves
Here the contractions use the Kronecker delta.
For an oriented piecewise smooth surface with boundary , Stokes theorem states
where the orientations obey the right-hand rule and is continuously differentiable near . Apply it to . The scalar triple product gives
The last integrand is , as the component formula
shows. Since is arbitrary, the cross-product form of Stokes theorem follows:
The derivatives in the surface expression act on , not on the surface element.
For the specified square, the path is clockwise when viewed from positive , so the compatible unit normal is . On the first and fourth edges, and are parallel, giving zero cross product. On the second edge, and runs from to , so contributes . On the third edge, and runs from to , so the contribution is . Thus the line integral is .
For an independent surface integral, and for the position vector field. Its integrand is therefore . The square has unit area and downward orientation, giving
Write the curl and cross product with the Levi-Civita symbol, then use its contraction identity:
Expanding with the product rule gives
Recognize the divergence in the first and third terms, and the directional derivatives in the other two. The curl of a cross product identity is therefore
The derivatives act on both vector fields. No assumption of vanishing divergence or spatially constant fields has been made.
Use the full field in the PDF, including the exponential term missing from the transcription. Its divergence is
The exponential in the third component has zero derivative. In cylindrical coordinates, the solid has and . Therefore the divergence theorem gives the outward flux
The integration includes the entire closed boundary, both cap and base.
Write . The trace fixes the isotropic part, and splitting the remaining matrix into its symmetric and antisymmetric parts gives the scalar, symmetric-traceless and axial tensor decomposition:
Here and . The antisymmetric part is . Its associated axial vector is
Indeed the contraction identity gives . Adding the three parts reconstructs .
The minus sign is required by the index order . The symmetric gradient and curl decomposition written instead for has the opposite axial sign. The divergence supplies , the trace-free symmetric part describes shape change, and the antisymmetric part describes local rotation.
Take the closed surface with its outward orientation. For sufficiently smooth fields defined throughout the solid, the divergence theorem and the identity that the divergence of a curl is zero give
Thus the curl term carries no net outward flux, and is independent of . The hole in the solid torus does not invalidate the divergence theorem; singularities of inside the integration region would invalidate the smoothness argument and must be excluded.
For a bounded volume with piecewise smooth closed boundary , and a continuously differentiable vector field on a neighbourhood of , the divergence theorem states
Here is the outward unit normal vector. The left side is the outward flux; the right side integrates the divergence over the enclosed volume.
For a continuously differentiable vector field on a bounded volume with piecewise smooth closed boundary , the divergence theorem states
where is the outward unit normal vector. Thus total outward flux through a closed surface equals the integral of the local divergence inside it. A nonclosed surface first needs a suitable closure, with the added surface's flux accounted for separately.
Close the cone with the horizontal disk at height , and let be the enclosed solid. The divergence is
The term integrates to zero by reflection symmetry of each circular cross-section. Using the divergence theorem and cylindrical coordinates, the closed-surface flux is
The outward normal on is , so its flux is its area times :
Subtracting this cap contribution gives the required lateral flux:
This is conical flux by closing with a cap. The normal convention matters: on the lateral cone the outward normal points radially outwards and partly downwards, so the contribution to the lateral flux is negative. To justify applying the theorem at the vertex, truncate a small tip and take its size to zero; the extra flux vanishes because is regular there.
Apply the symmetric gradient and curl decomposition separately to the electric field and the magnetic field:
The corresponding axial parts are
The second equalities use the vacuum Maxwell equations. Their divergence constraints also show that both symmetric gradient tensors are traceless.
Expand the two operators before comparing coefficients:
Equality requires , , and . Thus , giving the positive integrating factor
With , the result is the Sturm-Liouville form . The arbitrary positive multiplier rescales both sides of the eigenvalue problem and does not change its eigenvalues. The coefficient is already present in the divergence term of ; it must not be counted a second time in the exponential.