With the normal directed out of an obstacle into the fluid, a field solving outside has the representation
Here is the outgoing Green function for the three-dimensional Helmholtz equation and the observation point lies outside the obstacle. The formula follows from Green second identity; the normal to the exterior fluid on its inner boundary is the negative of the stated obstacle normal. The surface term represents the scattered field.
Use the outgoing Green function for the three-dimensional Helmholtz equation
Let 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 is
The 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.
For unit plane wave incidence , define the scattering wavevector difference and
The outgoing Green function for the three-dimensional Helmholtz equation gives
The Born far-field pattern is , a Fourier transform sample of the potential. Expanding the far-field Rytov exponential in gives the same leading outgoing term, while the logarithmic representation preserves its accumulated phase and amplitude correction.