On the properties of the potential and the spherical harmonic expansions for general planets

Abstract

The convergence of spherical harmonic expansions (SHEs) of gravitational potentials below the Brillouin sphere has been a long-standing problem in potential theory and geodesy. In previous work, some of the present authors gave a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence along a fixed ray, formulated in terms of analyticity of a longitudinal average of the balayage density. In the present paper, we extend these results to arbitrary physical solid planets, assuming only that the planet is a compact subset of $\mathbb R^3$ and that its density belongs to $L^\infty$. We establish sharp regularity properties of the gravitational potential at the Brillouin sphere. The potential and its first derivative extend continuously to the sphere, the first derivative is locally Hölder continuous with exponent $1/2$, and the second derivative satisfies the optimal bound $V''(z)=O\bigl(\operatorname{dist}(z,\partial\mathbb D)^{-1/2}\bigr)$ under nontangential approach from the exterior. We also obtain sharp estimates for the spherical harmonic coefficients: $a_\ell=O(\ell^{-3/2}).$ If, for almost every latitude, the Brillouin sphere is a one-sided Lebesgue point from the interior of the longitudinally averaged density, then $a_\ell=o(\ell^{-3/2}).$ Both estimates are optimal. We explicitly recover the balayage density on the Brillouin sphere from the exterior gravitational potential, and its circular averages from the potential along a single radial line. Finally, we give a physical characterization of convergence of the SHE below the Brillouin sphere. If the SHE converges at such a point, then, after truncating the planet at any suitable intermediate radius, the gravitational potential of the removed outer part is completely determined by that of the remaining truncated planet. This provides a direct interpretation of the strong constraint imposed by convergence below the Brillouin sphere.