Een coördinaatvrije basis voor vectorvelden in de context van rotatiesymmetrische operatoren met behulp van sferisch harmonische functies
J. Fleuren (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
R van der Toorn – Mentor (TU Delft - Mathematical Physics)
Bas Janssens – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Analysis)
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Abstract
Vector spherical harmonics are a set of basis functions for vector fields derived from the spherical harmonic functions. They are commonly used in spectral methods in certain areas of applied mathematics. In most of the existing literature they are defined in a way that is heavily dependent on the used coördinate system. In this thesis we define vector spherical harmonics in a coördinate free manner. We first do this on a sphere, using two tensor operators: the exterior derivative and the Hodge-star. We then extend these functions to vector functions in 3-dimensional Euclidian space and define a last type of vector function to form a complete basis for vector fields. We do this in such a manner that the vector spherical harmonics inherit some of the nice properties of the spherical harmonic functions with respect to rotations and rotational symmetric operators.