Harmonic projection and multipole Vectors

Abstract

We show that the multipole vector decomposition, recently introduced by Copi et al., is a consequence of Sylvester's theorem, and corresponds to the Maxwell's representation. Analyzing it in terms of harmonic polynomials, we show that this decomposition results in fact from the application of the harmonic projection operator and its inverse. We derive the coefficients of the usual harmonic decomposition from the multipole vectors. We answer to '' an open question '', first raised by Copi et al., and reported by Katz and Weeks, by showing that the decomposition resulting from their corollary is unstable. We propose however a new decomposition which is stable. We generalize these results to complex functions and polynomials.