The simplest “obstacle” to be placed into water is a point source. The corresponding velocity potential (up to a time-periodic factor) is usually referred to as the Green's function. This notion is crucial for the theory we are going to present in this book, since a wide class of time-harmonic velocity potentials (in particular, solutions to the water-wave problem) admit representations based on Green's function (see Section 1.3).

Potentials constructed by using Green's functions form the basis for such different topics as proving solvability theorems (see Chapters 2 and 3) and constructing examples of trapped waves (nontrivial solutions to homogeneous boundary value problems given in Chapter 4).

The plan of this chapter is as follows. Beginning with Green's functions of point sources in water of infinite (Subsection 1.1.1) and finite (Subsection 1.1.2) depths, we proceed with straight line sources and ring sources (Section 1.2) arising in two-dimensional problems and problems with axial symmetry, respectively. Green's representation of velocity potentials and related questions are given in Section 1.3. Bibliographical notes (Section 1.4) contain references to original papers treating the material of this chapter as well as other related works.

Three-Dimensional Problems of Point Sources

Point Source in Deep Water

In the present subsection, we consider in detail Green's function describing the point source in deep water. In Subsection 1.1.1.1, we define it as a solution to the water-wave problem having Dirac's measure as the right-hand-side term in the equation.