An Equivalence Between the Dirichlet and the Neumann Problem for the Laplace Operator

Abstract

We give a representation of the solution of the Neumann problem for the Laplace operator on the n-dimensional unit ball in terms of the solution of an associated Dirichlet problem. The representation is extended to other operators besides the Laplacian, to smooth simply connected planar domains, and to the infinite-dimensional Laplacian on the unit ball of an abstract Wiener space, providing in particular an explicit solution for the Neumann problem in this case. As an application, we derive an explicit formula for the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator, which may be of independent interest.