Graduate School in Nonlinear Science

Sponsored by The Danish Research Agency


MIDIT                              OFD                          CATS
Modelling, Nonlinear Dynamics      Optics and Fluid Dynamics    Chaos and Turbulence Studies
and Irreversible Thermodynamics    Risø National Laboratory     Niels Bohr Institute and 
Technical University of Denmark    Building 128                 Department of Chemistry
Building 321                       P.O. Box 49                  University of Copenhagen 
DK-2800 Lyngby                     DK-4000 Roskilde             DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark                            Denmark                      Denmark

SOLITARY WAVES AT SOLID SURFACES

Andreas Mayer
University of Regensburg, Germany

MIDIT-seminar 503

Tuesday, November 27, 2001, 15:00 h
at IMM, Bldg. 305, Room 053, DTU

Abstract: The existence of solitary waves propagating along the surface of an elastic medium has been a long-standing question. It can now be answered in the affirmative because of recent experiments on coated substrates using laser excitation. Propagation of nonlinear surface waves in solids is described by an evolution equation which contains a nonlocal second-order nonlinearity. Dispersion can be introduced into the system by adding a thin film or modifying the surface in another way. Solitary pulse solutions of the evolution equation are computed as limiting cases of periodic pulse trains. Their linear stability is analyzed and their shape is compared with experimental results. The behaviour of the solitary pulses in collisions with each other is investigated by numerical simulations and found to strongly depend on the linear dispersion law.