Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 82 1 b i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let , so the Lighthill stress tensor is . Write and . The distributional derivative of the Heaviside step function gives . Applying the product rule a second time yields the surface sources of a discontinuous Lighthill stress tensor:Repeated indices are summed. The first line gives the two bulk acoustic quadrupole distributions. The second line consists of additional surface delta distributions and their derivatives, all supported on the shock wave . For a symmetric Lighthill stress tensor, the first two coefficients of combine to after relabelling indices.
A discontinuity therefore adds both a surface-delta source and a surface-delta-derivative source. The level function need not be a signed distance: retaining its derivatives makes the expression invariant under a smooth reparametrization of the same surface. If the two bulk fields are only continuously differentiable, their second derivatives in the first line are read weakly; no classical second derivative is being assumed. The coefficients multiplying are kept as extensions, not replaced prematurely by traces.