1/17/2020 Solutions to the scalar wave equation

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 Benjamin Klein  Laser Photonics  Solutions to the scalar wave equation

SO LUTIO NS TO THE SCALAR WAVE EQUATIO N

Let’s repeat the scalar wave equation from the last section:

I’m going to de ne a new symbol: , which admittedly seems pretty arbitrary, but it’s
my book and I can make up symbols if I want.  It will make sense later.  So if I use my new
symbol in the scalar wave equation it becomes

We’re going to solve this equation using the time-honored technique of just writing down the
answer and then proving that it works.  The solution is any twice-differentiable function , as
long as and are grouped together as follows:

What I mean by ‘twice differentiable’ is that I can take the derivative of twice without getting
into trouble with in nities, so in principle things like step functions are out.  Other than that
restriction, can be any function, so we could have (for example)

or

bklein.ece.gatech.edu/laser-photonics/solutions-to-the-scalar-wave-equation/ 1/3
1/17/2020 Solutions to the scalar wave equation

amongst many other choices.  Now, I’ll prove that this solution actually satis es the scalar wave
equation, by substituting it into the scalar wave equation.  The derivative of our function is
, and the second derivative of is .  In our case , so we can see that

and, by ye olde chain rule,

similarly

and

So we’re pretty much done proving this solution, because we can see that

so

Hopefully you can see that there is another possible solution to the wave equation; namely,

In the next section we’ll explore the properties of these solutions.

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