Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / Paper 2 / 3 / f / Solution

The outward normal of the exterior region points into the excluded disc, so it is $-\mathbf{r}$ on the unit circle. Differentiating the Dirichlet Green function from (e), and writing $s=|{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }|$ and $d=|\mathbf{r}-{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }|$, givesHere $|\mathbf{r}-\mathbf{p}{|}^2=d^2/s^2$ was used. The concentrated boundary data have unit integral, so the boundary representation evaluates this exterior Poisson kernel at $\mathbf{r}=(-1,0)$. Thus the bounded solution on either part of the exterior $x$-axis isIt is positive on both intervals, diverges as $x^{\prime }\to -1^{-}$ at the boundary source, and tends to $1/(2\pi )$ as $|x^{\prime }|\to \infty$. Boundedness at infinity selects this solution; otherwise one could add an arbitrary multiple of $\log |{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }|$ without changing the circle's boundary data.