Plane Waves and Spherical Means Applied to Partial Differential Equations (Dover Books on Mathematics)

Elementary and self-contained, this heterogeneous collection of results on partial differential equations employs certain elementary identities for plane and spherical integrals of an arbitrary function, showing how a variety of results on fairly general differential equations follow from those identities. The first chapter deals with the decomposition of arbitrary functions into functions of the type of plane waves. Succeeding chapters introduce the first application of the Radon transformation and examine the solution of the initial value problem for homogeneous hyperbolic equations with constant coefficients and the problem of determining a function from its integrals over spheres of radius 1. 1955 edition.