A well-posed integral equation formulation for three-dimensional rough surface scattering

We consider the problem of scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by an unbounded sound-soft rough surface. Recently, a Brakhage–Werner type integral equation formulation of this problem has been proposed, based on an ansatz as a combined singleand double-layer potential, but replacing the usual fundamental solution of the Helmholtz equation with an appropriate half-space Green’s function. Moreover, it has been shown in the three-dimensional case that this integral equation is uniquely solvable in the space LðGÞ when the scattering surface G does not differ too much from a plane. In this paper, we show that this integral equation is uniquely solvable with no restriction on the surface elevation or slope. Moreover, we construct explicit bounds on the inverse of the associated boundary integral operator, as a function of the wave number, the parameter coupling the singleand double-layer potentials, and the maximum surface slope. These bounds show that the norm of the inverse operator is bounded uniformly in the wave number, k, for kO0, if the coupling parameter h is chosen proportional to the wave number. In the case when G is a plane, we show that the choice hZk=2 is nearly optimal in terms of minimizing the condition number.