Helmholtz's theorem for two retarded fields and its application to Maxwell's equations

Abstract

An extension of the Helmholtz theorem is proved, which states that two retarded vector fields ${\bf F}_1$ and ${\bf F}_2$ satisfying appropriate initial and boundary conditions are uniquely determined by specifying their divergences $\nabla\cdot{\bf F}_{1}$ and $\nabla\cdot{\bf F}_{2}$ and their coupled curls $-\nabla\times{\bf F}_{1}-\partial {\bf F}_{2}/\partial t$ and $\nabla\times{\bf F}_{2}-(1/c^2)\partial {\bf F}_{1}/\partial t$, where $c$ is the propagation speed of the fields. When a corollary of this theorem is applied to Maxwell's equations, the retarded electric and magnetic fields are directly obtained. The proof of the theorem relies on a novel demonstration of the uniqueness of the solutions of the vector wave equation.