 Solution

Eliminating the shear stress from the two linear equations gives the Maxwell shear-wave dispersion equation in physical space,where $\nu$ is the kinematic viscosity. Substitution of a Fourier mode $e^{iky+\sigma t}$ givesThese are temporal exponents: the oscillation angular frequency is the imaginary part of $\sigma$, with the sign determined by the selected time convention. For $4\tau \nu k^2<1$ both exponents are real and nonpositive. At equality the repeated exponent is $-1/(2\tau )$; generic solutions include $t{e}^{-t/(2\tau )}$. Above the threshold the modes are damped propagating shear disturbances:At large $|k|$ their phase velocity tends to $\sqrt{\nu /\tau }=\sqrt{G_{\mathrm{el}}/{\rho }_0}$.

For the limit $\tau \to 0$ at fixed $\mu ,{\rho }_0$ and $k$, expansion of the square root givesAfter a short initial relaxation, the surviving branch obeys the diffusion equation $u_t=\nu u_{yy}$ of a Newtonian fluid. The fast branch disappears on the vanishing viscoelastic relaxation time; at $k=0$ the two exponents are exactly $0$ and $-1/\tau$. This limit is not uniform in $k$: modes with $k$ of order $(\tau \nu {)}^{-1/2}$ still sample the oscillatory transition. If instead $G_{\mathrm{el}}=\mu /\tau$ is held fixed as $\tau \to 0$, then $\mu \to 0$ and the fixed-$k$ slow exponent tends to zero. The ordinary Newtonian fluid limit therefore specifies which material parameter is held fixed.