New explicit nonperiodic solutions of the homogeneous wave equation

Abstract

We exhibit a newansatz for the solution of the homogeneous three-dimensional time-dependent wave equation in spherical coordinates of the form Φ(r,t)=Y(θ, φ)(I(r)+G(g)), whereg ≡ct/r. FunctionG(g) has explicit solution in terms of three independent nonperiodic functionss l,t l,u l (s l andt l are related to the associated Legendre functions of the first and second kinds).G(g) is nonperiodic and may be cast as a superposition of incoming and outgoing waves. To obtainG(g), we solved a nonhomogeneous associated Legendre equation (this solution, to our knowledge, is also new).G(g) may prove useful in many microscopic and macroscopic problems, representable by homogeneous wave equations.