Computational high frequency wave propagation

Abstract

Numerical simulation of high frequency acoustic, elastic or electro-magnetic wave propagation is important in many applications. Recently the traditional techniques of ray tracing based on geometrical optics have been augmented by numerical procedures based on partial differential equations. Direct simulations of solutions to the eikonal equation have been used in seismology, and lately approximations of the Liouville or Vlasov equation formulations of geometrical optics have generated impressive results. There are basically two techniques that follow from this latter approach: one is wave front methods and the other moment methods. We shall develop these methods in some detail after a brief review of more traditional algorithms for simulating high frequency wave propagation.