There is no respect for mere age in Science or Technology. Yet the cen tenary of the discovery, by the third Lord Rayleigh, that elastic waves can be guided by a surface, is memorable for the contradictions which it encompasses: Rayleigh's assessment of his classic 1885 paper as a rather minor mathematical development with a potential value only in seismology on the one hand; on the other the rediscovery of the subject in a totally that of electronic signal processing - which has led to its different fiel- explosive growth over the last twenty years. The new surface acoustic wave (SAW)...

The topic of surface waves lies at the interface between a number of disci plines - physics, theoretical and applied mechanics, electroacoustics, ap plied mathematics, surface science and seismology. This volume, based on papers delivered at European Mechanics Colloquium 226, reflects this diversity in approach and background, while showing strong links between phenomena arising from different fields. The emphasis is on recent de velopments such as nonlinear and other nonclassical effects, which have great importance for both pure science and for applications such as signal processing,...

This monograph is concerned with the fundamentals of up-to-date geo metrical optics treated as an approximate method of wave theory. Geometrical optics has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Primarily, it has acquired a number of novel disciplines: space-time geo metrical optics, the quasi-isotropic approximation, the modern theory of caustics related to catastrophe theory, and perturbation techniques for rays, to name only a few. Another acquisition is the reliable boundaries of appli cability for geometrical optics, based upon the concept of the Fresnel volume for a ray. These...

Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Turbulence is devoted to a method for obtaining analytical solutions to problems of electromagnetic wave propagation in turbulence. In a systematic way the monograph presents the Mellin transforms to evaluate analytically integrals that are not in integral tables. Ample examples of application are outlined and solutions for many problems in turbulence theory are given. The method itself relates to asymptotic results that are applicable to a broad class of problems for which many asymptotic methods had to be employed previously.