Finding general solution to this pde

climbon
Messages
16
Reaction score
0
Hi, my equation is;

<br /> \frac{\partial}{\partial t}U(x,y,t) = 2g \left( x \frac{\partial}{\partial y} - y \frac{\partial}{\partial x} \right) U(x,y,t)<br />

I want to find the general solution to this but I don't know how to find it?

Any help would be great...thanks :D
 
Physics news on Phys.org
What class is this for, a PDE class?

What have you tried already?
 
Yer its PDE class.

I've tried using Charactoristics, so,

<br /> \frac{\partial x(t)}{\partial s} = 2gy(t)<br />

and

<br /> \frac{\partial y(t)}{\partial s} = -2gx(t)<br />

With s=t. I am not sure what to do now with regards to forming a general solution, would it be something of the form,

<br /> U(x,y,t) = f (x_0 +2gy(t)t, y_0 -2gx(t)t, t)<br />

I'm not sure how to proceed.

Thanks.
 
Writing the original equation in polar coordinates should be illuminating. There's a further linear change of variables that will put the equation into a form where the general solution should be obvious.
 
There are two things I don't understand about this problem. First, when finding the nth root of a number, there should in theory be n solutions. However, the formula produces n+1 roots. Here is how. The first root is simply ##\left(r\right)^{\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)}##. Then you multiply this first root by n additional expressions given by the formula, as you go through k=0,1,...n-1. So you end up with n+1 roots, which cannot be correct. Let me illustrate what I mean. For this...
Back
Top