What is the derivative of the Dirac delta?

2.5k Views Asked by At

The problem I'm having is how to find the gradient of delta.

Does the gradient do the following?

$$\nabla \delta(r)=\frac{\partial\delta(r)}{\partial x}\hat{x}+\frac{\partial\delta(r)}{\partial y}\hat{y}+\frac{\partial\delta(r)}{\partial z}\hat{z}$$

If that is correct, how do I derive delta of $r$ in respect to $x, y, z$?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

18
On BEST ANSWER

I mean, that answer may be unsatisfying. The $\delta$-function is defined so that for a smooth functions $f$, we have that: $$\int f(x)\delta(x)dx=f(0)$$ So if you want to understand the derivative of the $\delta$-function, one can note that by integration by parts, and assuming that $f$ vanishes at infinity, you should have: $$\int f(x)\delta'(x)dx=-\int f'(x)\delta(x)dx=-f'(0)$$ In general, you just define $\delta'(x)$ to be the function with this property on all smooth functions.

Edit: I'll compute $\nabla \delta$. Note that we have that: $$\nabla \delta=\delta'(r)\hat{r}$$ This is a badly-behaved distribution in the following sense. Note that if $f(0,0,0)\neq 0$ then we formally have that: $$\int\delta'(r) f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi= \delta(0)f(0,0,0)-\int \int\delta(r) \partial_r f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi$$ The latter is well-defined by the prior is not. On the other hand, we may write: $$\int \delta'(r) f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi=-\int\delta(r) f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi-\int\delta(r) r\partial_r f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi=-f(0,0,0)$$

So you achieve the relation: $$r\delta'(r)=-\delta(r)$$

Edit2: To answer a point in the comments, there are two distributions with similar notation. One is defined by: $$\int\int \int \delta(r)f(r,\theta,\phi)drd\theta d\phi=f(0,0,0)$$ The other is defined by: $$\int\int \int \delta({\bf r})f(x,y,z)dxdy dz=f(0,0,0)$$

One has the formal relation: $$4\pi r^2\delta({\bf r})=\delta(r)$$ I believe the the asker was interested in the prior, rather than the former.