Abstract: This is the central chapter of the book. We emphasize that in this chapter we introduce the eikonal approximation without discussing the accuracy of the approximation, or how to deal with situations where it breaks down (for example, at caustics or in mode conversion regions). Those are matters for later chapters. The great advantage of eikonal methods is that they reduce the solution of systems of PDEs, or systems of integrodifferential equations, to the solution of a family of ODEs. This often results in a substantial increase in computational speed in applications. In addition, the ray trajectories themselves often provide useful physical insight. The outline of topics follows.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-02-27
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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