  A complete analysis is presented for the far-field creeping flow produced by
a multipolar force distribution in a fluid confined between two parallel planar
walls. We show that at distances larger than several wall separations the flow
field assumes the Hele-Shaw form, i.e., it is parallel to the walls and varies
quadratically in the transverse direction. The associated pressure field is a
two-dimensional harmonic function that is characterized by the same multipolar
number m as the original force multipole. Using these results we derive
asymptotic expressions for the Green's matrix that represents Stokes flow in
the wall-bounded fluid in terms of a multipolar spherical basis. This Green's
matrix plays a central role in our recently proposed algorithm [Physica A xx,
{\bf xxx} (2005)] for evaluating many-body hydrodynamic interactions in a
suspension of spherical particles in the parallel-wall geometry. Implementation
of our asymptotic expressions in this algorithm increases its efficiency
substantially because the numerically expensive evaluation of the exact matrix
elements is needed only for the neighboring particles. Our asymptotic analysis
will also be useful in developing hydrodynamic algorithms for wall-bounded
periodic systems and implementing acceleration methods by using corresponding
results for the two-dimensional scalar potential.
