Sharp high-frequency estimates for the Helmholtz equation and applications to boundary integral equations

We consider three problems for the Helmholtz equation in interior and exterior domains in R^d (d=2,3): the exterior Dirichlet-to-Neumann and Neumann-to-Dirichlet problems for outgoing solutions, and the interior impedance problem. We derive sharp estimates for solutions to these problems that, in combination, give bounds on the inverses of the combined-field boundary integral operators for exterior Helmholtz problems.Comment: Version 3: 42 pages; improved exposition in response to referee comments and added several reference

Wave-number-explicit bounds in time-harmonic scattering

In this paper we consider the problem of scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by a bounded sound soft obstacle in two and three dimensions, studying dependence on the wave number in two classical formulations of this problem. The first is the standard variational/weak formulation in the part of the exterior domain contained in a large sphere, with an exact Dirichletto-Neumann map applied on the boundary. The second formulation is as a second kind boundary integral equation in which the solution is sought as a combined single- and double-layer potential. For the variational formulation we obtain, in the case when the obstacle is starlike, explicit upper and lower bounds which show that the inf-sup constant decreases like k −1 as the wave number k increases. We also give an example where the obstacle is not starlike and the inf-sup constant decreases at least as fast as k −2. For the boundary integral equation formulation, if the boundary is also Lipschitz and piecewise smooth, we show that the norm of the inverse boundary integral operator is bounded independently of k if the coupling parameter is chosen correctly. The methods we use also lead to explicit bounds on the solution of the scattering problem in the energy norm when the obstacle is starlike in which the dependence of the norm of the solution on the wave number and on the geometry are made explicit

On the Kleinman-Martin integral equation method for electromagnetic scattering by a dielectric body

The interface problem describing the scattering of time-harmonic electromagnetic waves by a dielectric body is often formulated as a pair of coupled boundary integral equations for the electric and magnetic current densities on the interface $\Gamma$. In this paper, following an idea developed by Kleinman and Martin \cite{KlMa} for acoustic scattering problems, we consider methods for solving the dielectric scattering problem using a single integral equation over $\Gamma$ for a single unknown density. One knows that such boundary integral formulations of the Maxwell equations are not uniquely solvable when the exterior wave number is an eigenvalue of an associated interior Maxwell boundary value problem. We obtain four different families of integral equations for which we can show that by choosing some parameters in an appropriate way, they become uniquely solvable for all real frequencies. We analyze the well-posedness of the integral equations in the space of finite energy on smooth and non-smooth boundaries