Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 335 1 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Use the outgoing Green function for the three-dimensional Helmholtz equationLet point out of the obstacle into the exterior. Apply Green second identity to the field and in a large exterior region. Their Sommerfeld radiation conditions make the outer-sphere contribution vanish. The normal on the exterior region's inner boundary is , so the Kirchhoff–Helmholtz representation isThe first integral is the incident source field . Therefore the scattered field is the surface term. Since solves the homogeneous Helmholtz equation within the obstacle, its surface term is zero at exterior observation points; the same representation can be written using only scattered-field traces:The unknown boundary condition determines these traces, but the representation itself does not require choosing that condition.