Integral Equations for Acoustic Scattering by Partially Impenetrable Composite Objects

We study direct first-kind boundary integral equations arising from transmission problems for the Helmholtz equation with piecewise constant coefficients and Dirichlet boundary conditions imposed on a closed surface. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of so-called spurious resonances, that is, the failure of the boundary integral equations to possess unique solutions. Following [A. Buffa and R. Hiptmair, Numer Math, 100, 1-19 (2005)] we propose a modified version of the boundary integral equations that is immune to spurious resonances. Via a gap construction it will serve as the basis for a universally well-posed stabilized global multi-trace formulation that generalizes the method of [X. Claeys and R. Hiptmair, Commun Pure and Appl Math, 66, 1163-1201 (2013)] to situations with Dirichlet boundary conditions.