Modified equations of the first kind for the Helmholtz equation

Integral equations of the first kind for exterior problems arising in the study of the three‐dimensional Helmholtz equation are considered. These equations are derived by seeking solutions in the form of layer potentials with modified fundamental solutions. For each first kind equation, existence and uniqueness of solution are proved with the aid of composition relations involving associated modified boundary integral operators. For the Dirichlet problem, an optimal choice of the modification coefficients is considered in order to minimize the condition number of the resulting integral operator. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.