Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2005 / Paper 1 / 1 / Solution

For $r>0$, the chain rule gives $\partial r/\partial x_i=x_i/r$. Differentiating the radial factor gives $d\varphi /dr=e^{ikr}(ikr-1)/(4\pi r^2)$, so in Cartesian coordinatesThe origin is excluded because the scalar field is singular there.

The Stokes theorem states ${\int }_S(\nabla \times \mathbf{F})\cdot \mathbf{n}dS={\oint }_{\partial S}\mathbf{F}\cdot d\mathbf{\ell }$ for a sufficiently smooth vector field and oriented surface with piecewise smooth boundary. The boundary orientation follows the right-hand rule relative to $\mathbf{n}$.

For the convective acceleration identity, use the Levi-Civita symbol contraction ${ϵ}_{ijk}{ϵ}_{k\ell m}={\delta }_{i\ell }{\delta }_{jm}-{\delta }_{im}{\delta }_{j\ell }$. It givesRearranging proves the required vector identity.

For orthogonal coordinates, define the scale factors of orthogonal coordinates $h_i=|\partial \mathbf{r}/\partial q_i|$ and tangent unit vectors ${\mathbf{e}}_i=h_i^{-1}\partial \mathbf{r}/\partial q_i$. They form an orthonormal basis, and $d\mathbf{r}={\sum }_i{h}_i{\mathbf{e}}_{i}d{q}_i$. Equating $d\psi ={\sum }_i{\partial }_{q_i}\psi d{q}_i$ with $\nabla \psi \cdot d\mathbf{r}$ identifies each component. Thus the gradient in orthogonal coordinates isThis holds on a regular coordinate chart where all scale factors are positive.