A note on Green's Theorem

Abstract

Green's theorem, for line integrals in the plane, is well known, but proofs of it are often complicated. Verblunsky [1] and Potts [2] have given elegant proofs, which depend on a lemma on the decomposition of the interior of a closed rectifiable Jordan curve into a finite collection of subregions of arbitrarily small diameter. The following proof, for the case of Riemann integration, avoids this requirement by making a construction closely analogous to Goursat's proof of Cauchy's theorem. The integrability of Qx—Py is assumed, where P(x, y) and Q(x, y) are the functions involved, but not the integrability of the individual partial derivatives Qx, and py this latter assumption being made by other authors. However, P and Q are assumed differentiable, at points interior to the curve.