Boundary integral equation analysis on the sphere (Q471197)

The paper presents a systematic analysis of integral operators of potential theory for Helmholtz and time-harmonic Maxwell equations on the unit sphere. The provided analytic expressions of the action of a rather complete collection of integral operators on scalar and tangential vector fields expanded in spherical harmonics permit a rapid and complete analysis of the conditioning and spectral properties of integral equations used in acoustic and electromagnetic scattering. The authors demonstrate this for various Fredholm equations of the second kind, which have been proposed in the literature. It is shown that tunable parameters that appear in many formulations have an significant impact on the spectral properties and consequently on the performance of iterative solution methods.