The Spherical harmonic reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Spherical harmonic

In mathematics, the spherical harmonics are an orthogonal set of solutions to Laplace's equation represented in a system of spherical coordinates. The solutions are generally expressed in terms of trigonometric functions and Legendre polynomials. This form comes from separation of variables once the Laplacian is written in the spherical coordinate system.

The spherical harmonic with parameters l, m can be written as:

Spherical harmonics are important in many theoretical and practical applications, particularly the computation of atomic electron configurations, and the approximation of the Earth's gravitational field and the geoid.

See also

• Harmonic function
• Sturm-Liouville theory

External links

• "General Solution to LaPlace's Equation in Spherical Harmonics" (Spherical Harmonic Analysis). Solid Earth Geophysics.
• Spherical harmonics on Physicsworld

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