Laplacian in Spherical Coordinates
July 9 2016
- Verify Laplace's Equation in Spherical Coordinates
- Derive Laplace's Equation in Spherical Coordinates
Verify Laplace's Equation in Spherical Coordinates
We verify the following equation is correct by expanding `u_(r r)`, `u_r`, `u_(theta theta)`, `u_theta`, and `u_(phi phi)` in the right side of the equation.
`u_(x x) + u_(y y) + u_(z z) = u_(r r) + (2 / r) u_r + (1 / r^2) u_(theta theta) + (cos(theta) / (r^2 sin(theta))) u_theta + (1 / (r^2 sin^2(theta))) u_(phi phi)`Derive Laplace's Equation in Spherical Coordinates
Laplacian for general coordinates is defined with covariant derivative in Riemann geometry.
`Delta = g^(i j) grad_i grad_j`This formula is transformed as follow.
`Delta = (1 / sqrt(g)) del_i sqrt(g) g^(i j) del_j`In the following program, we calculate Laplacian using this formula.