Shape derivatives of boundary integral operators in electromagnetic scattering. I: Shape differentiability of pseudo-homogeneous boundary integral operators (Q434297)

In scattering theory, the shape analysis of the solution with respect to deformations of the obstacle can be obtained from the Gâteaux differentiability analysis of particular boundary integral operators and potentials. In this paper, the authors study the Gâteaux differentiability of boundary integral operators with strongly and weakly singular pseudo-homogeneous kernels acting between classical Sobolev spaces, with respect to smooth deformations of the boundary considered as a hypersurface of \({\mathbb R}^d\) with \(d\in{\mathbb N}\), \(d\geq 2\). They consider bounded domains \(\Omega\) in \({\mathbb R}^d\) and assume that the boundary \(\Gamma\) of \(\Omega\) is a smooth closed hypersurface. The integral operators to study can be written in the form \[ {\mathcal K}_\Gamma u(x) =\int_\Gamma k(y, x-y)u(y)\,ds(y),\quad x\in \Gamma, \] where the integral is assumed to exist in the sense of a Cauchy principal value and the kernel \(k\) is regular with respect to the variable \(y\in\Gamma\) and pseudo-homogeneous with respect to the variable \(z=x-y\in{\mathbb R}^d\), a variant of the class of weakly singular kernels introduced in [\textit{J.-C. Nédélec}, Acoustic and electromagnetic equations. Integral representations for harmonic problems. New York, NY: Springer (2001; Zbl 0981.35002)]; see Definition 2.3 for details. Some well-known regularity properties of these operators on the Sobolev spaces \(H^t(\Gamma)\) for all \(t\in\mathbb R\), available also for their adjoint operators, are collected in Theorems 2.6 and 2.7. In order to exploit the properties of Gâteaux derivatives in Fréchet spaces, the variations of the domain \(\Omega\) are represented by elements of a function space. The authors consider variations generated by transformations of the form \(x\mapsto x + r(x)\), where \(r\) belongs to the space \([C^\infty(\Gamma,{\mathbb R}^d),d_\infty]\), the distance \(d_\infty\) induced by the family of norms \[ ||r||_k=\sup_{0\leq m\leq k}||D^m r||_\infty,\quad k\in{\mathbb N}. \] These transformations deform the domain \(\Omega\) into a domain \(\Omega_r\) with boundary \[ \Gamma_r=(I+r)\Gamma=\{x_r=x+r(x):x\in\Gamma\}. \] For a mapping \(F\) defined on the set \(\{\Gamma_r: r\in B^\infty(0,\varepsilon)\}\) of boundaries, where \(B^\infty(0,\varepsilon)\) is the ball of center \(0\) a radius \(\varepsilon>0\) in \([C^\infty(\Gamma,{\mathbb R}^d),d_\infty]\), the shape derivative is defined by \[ dF[\Gamma;r] := \lim_{t\to 0}\frac{F(\Gamma_{tr})-F(\Gamma)}{t} \] if the limit exists and is finite. The main results of the paper are Theorems 4.5 and 4.8, where the authors establish the differentiability properties with respect to \(r\in B^\infty(0,\varepsilon)\) of boundary integral operators \({\mathcal K}_{\Gamma_r}\) defined for a function \(u_r\in H^t(\Gamma_r)\) by \[ ({\mathcal K}_{\Gamma_r} u_r)(x_r) = \int_{\Gamma_r} k_r(y_r, x_r - y_r)u_r(y_r)\,ds(y_r),\quad x_r\in \Gamma_r, \] and of potential operators \({\mathcal P}_r\) defined by \[ ({\mathcal P}_{r} u_r)(x_r) = \int_{\Gamma_r} k_r(y_r, x - y_r)u_r(y_r)\,ds(y_r),\quad x\in \Omega_r\cup\Omega_r^c, \] where \(k_r\in C^\infty(\Gamma_r\times({\mathbb R}^d\backslash\{0\}))\) is a pseudo-homogeneous kernel of class \(-m\) with \(m\in {\mathbb N}\). Theorem 4.5 establishes sufficient conditions in order that, for any \(s\in{\mathbb R}\), the mapping \[ B^\infty(0,\varepsilon)\to {\mathcal L}(H^s(\Gamma),H^{s+m}(\Gamma)) :r\mapsto \tau_r{\mathcal K}_{\Gamma_r} \tau_r^{-1} \] is Gâteaux differentiable and the differentiability can be reduced to the one of the kernel. Here, \(\tau_r\) is the pullback transformation which maps a function \(u_r\) defined on \(\Gamma_r\) to the function \(u_r\circ (I + r)\) defined on \(\Gamma\), and \({\mathcal L}(H^s(\Gamma),H^{s+m}(\Gamma))\) is the Banach space of linear operators from \(H^s(\Gamma)\) into \(H^{s+m}(\Gamma)\) with the norm topology. A similar result is given in Theorem 4.8 for potential operators \({\mathcal P}_r\) and the mapping \[ B^\infty(0,\varepsilon)\to {\mathcal L}(H^{s-\frac{1}{2}}(\Gamma),H^{s+m}(K_p)) :r\mapsto {\mathcal P}_r \tau_r^{-1}, \] where \(K_p\) is a compact subdomain of \(\Omega\), but here one order of regularity is lost at each derivation. They also give higher order Gâteaux derivatives of coefficient functions such as the Jacobian of the change of variables associated with the deformation (see Lemma 4.2), or the components of the unit normal vector (see Lemma 4.3). Finally, the last section is dedicated to the study of the shape differentiability properties of usual surface differential operators. The authors prove their infinite Gâteaux differentiability and give an explicit expression of their derivatives. These are then applied to obtain the derivatives of hypersingular boundary integral operators from acoustic, elastic and electromagnetic potential theory.