Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/iii/paper-65/1/b/ii/solution

For the positive-frequency internal gravity wave branch, . Differentiating with respect to the components of the wave vector gives the group velocity,
The wavefront-normal phase velocity is . Directly,
The negative-frequency branch changes both propagation signs but not their orthogonality. Another proof is that is homogeneous of degree zero in the wave vector, so Euler's homogeneous-function identity gives . Energy propagates along constant-phase surfaces, rather than normal to them. When , and ; the scalar-product result remains true, but there is no nonzero group-velocity direction to describe geometrically.

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