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The term is also used, even more specifically, to mean a "monochromatic" or sinusoidal plane wave: a travelling plane wave whose profile () is a sinusoidal function. That is, (,) = (() +) The parameter , which may be a scalar or a vector, is called the amplitude of the wave; the scalar coefficient is its "spatial frequency"; and the scalar is its "phase shift".
A plane wave is an important mathematical idealization where the disturbance is identical along any (infinite) plane normal to a specific direction of travel. Mathematically, the simplest wave is a sinusoidal plane wave in which at any point the field experiences simple harmonic motion at one frequency.
Intensity (physics) In physics and many other areas of science and engineering the intensity or flux of radiant energy is the power transferred per unit area, where the area is measured on the plane perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the energy. [a] In the SI system, it has units watts per square metre (W/m 2), or kg ⋅ s −3 in ...
Wavefront. In physics, the wavefront of a time-varying wave field is the set (locus) of all points having the same phase. [1] The term is generally meaningful only for fields that, at each point, vary sinusoidally in time with a single temporal frequency (otherwise the phase is not well defined). Wavefronts usually move with time.
S waves are transverse waves, meaning that the direction of particle movement of an S wave is perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation, and the main restoring force comes from shear stress. [2] Therefore, S waves cannot propagate in liquids [3] with zero (or very low) viscosity; however, they may propagate in liquids with high ...
In the physical sciences and electrical engineering, dispersion relations describe the effect of dispersion on the properties of waves in a medium. A dispersion relation relates the wavelength or wavenumber of a wave to its frequency. Given the dispersion relation, one can calculate the frequency-dependent phase velocity and group velocity of ...
The plane wave spectrum representation of a general electromagnetic field (e.g., a spherical wave) in the equation is the basic foundation of Fourier optics (this point cannot be emphasized strongly enough), because at z = 0, the equation simply becomes a Fourier transform (FT) relationship between the field and its plane wave contents (hence ...
Traveling plane wave. The wavefronts of a traveling plane wave in three-dimensional space. In mathematics and physics, a traveling plane wave[1] is a special case of plane wave, namely a field whose evolution in time can be described as simple translation of its values at a constant wave speed , along a fixed direction of propagation .