The polyharmonic Dirichlet problem and path counting (Q401291)

The paper deals with a class of polyharmonic Dirichlet problems in the half-space \(\mathbb R_+^d:=\mathbb R^{d-1}\times [0,\infty)\) of the form \[ \Delta^m u(x) = 0 \,\,\,\text{ for }\,\,\, x\in\mathbb R_+^d, \] \[ \lambda_k u=h_k \,\,\,\text{ for }\,\,\, k=0,\dots, m-1, \] where \(m> d/2\) and the \(m\) boundary conditions are \[ \lambda_ku(x) := \Delta^{k/2} u(x_1,\dots,x_{d-1},0),\,\,\text{ for }\,\, k \,\,\text{ even } \] and \[ \lambda_ku(x) := -\frac{\partial}{\partial x_d} \Delta^{(k-1)/2} u(x_1,\dots,x_{d-1},0),\,\,\text{ for }\,\, k \,\,\text{ odd}. \] The solution is presented as \[ u(x)=\sum_{j=0}^{m-1}\int_{\partial\mathbb R_+^d} g_j(y)k_j(x,y) d\sigma (y), \] where the kernel \(k:\mathbb R^d \times \partial\mathbb R_+^d \to\mathbb R\) is defined as \(k_j(x,y):=\lambda _{j,y}\phi (x-y)\), \(\phi\) is a fundamental solution to \(\Delta^m\) in \(\mathbb R^d\) and \(g_j\) are auxiliary functions, defined on \(\mathbb R^{d-1}\).