Inaugural lectures
Wednesday November 11, 2009 at 5.30pm - Lecture theatre T003, Wolfson School
Surface Waves
Professor Chris Linton,
Department of Mathematics
Surface waves are a common phenomenon which exist in many different physical contexts. They are associated with the propagation of energy along a surface, or along an interface between two different media. Perhaps the most obvious example is a wave on the surface of water, but others include seismic waves in the earth's crust and, at a much smaller scale, surface acoustic waves on elastic substrates, which are used in filters found in mobile phones.
To an applied mathematician, one of the attractions of surface waves is that while their physical manifestations may be quite different, the theoretical descriptions of the different phenomena actually possess many similarities.
In this lecture Chris will discuss a number of different types of surface wave, including array guided surface waves, which only exist when the surface or interface is periodic and which have only recently been studied theoretically.