Harmonic Functions

Dr. Md. Kamrujjaman

Department of Mathematics
University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: kamrujjaman@du.ac.bd
Note that the equation has no dependence on time, just on the spatial variables
x,y. This means that Laplace’s Equation describes steady state situations such as:
• steady state temperature distributions
• steady state stress distributions
• steady state potential distributions (it is also called the potential equation)
• steady state flows, for example in a cylinder, around a corner, …

Laplace’s equation occurs mainly in gravitation, electrostatics, steady-state heat flow, and fluid
flow. The gravitational potential u(x, y, z) at a point (x, y, z) resulting from a single mass located
at a point (X, Y, Z) is
Practical problems involving Laplace’s equation are boundary value problems in a
region T in space with boundary surface S. Such problems can be grouped into three
types:
This is Legendre’s equation, written out

that is, (18) must be the Fourier–Legendre series of f(ϕ). It is noted that we get
the coefficients