Dispersion relation Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A dispersion relation specifies which angular frequencies and wavevectors a linear wave model admits. Fix the plane wave convention
Here is a constant complex amplitude, is the wavevector, and is the angular frequency. Substitution into a constant-coefficient linear partial differential equation replaces by and by , turning the wave problem into an algebraic condition. A system can have several roots; means one chosen branch, rather than a promise that the full dispersion relation is single-valued. For real , means temporal growth in this convention, while means damping. The real-branch discussion of phase velocity and group velocity below assumes negligible loss.
For the one-dimensional wave equation , the dispersion relation is . The branch carries right-moving travelling waves for ; both its phase velocity and group velocity are . One may instead use the positive-angular frequency branch , with right-moving components at and left-moving components at . A real wave pairs each with ; that conjugate pair represents the same travelling pattern. Branch and sign choices therefore matter when interpreting a dispersion diagram.
A particularly tangible dispersive example is a small-amplitude surface gravity wave on still water of uniform depth . Neglect surface tension and viscosity, assume incompressible flow and irrotational flow, and impose a flat impermeable bottom. With and positive angular frequency,
Here is gravitational acceleration and is the hyperbolic tangent. Deep water means : and longer wavelengths have larger phase speed. Shallow water means : , an approximately nondispersive wave. Thus depth relative to wavelength, rather than depth alone, determines whether crests and wave packets travel together.[ref]
The dispersion diagram below also includes the ideal deep-water capillary wave limit , where is surface tension and is mass density. This limit requires the surface tension restoring term to dominate gravity; it reverses the trend of the surface gravity wave, giving larger phase speed at shorter wavelength. The combined gravity-capillary wave has .[ref]
The curves use dimensionless normalizations chosen separately for each model; they are analytical diagrams, not experimental data. Their beauty is that a single dispersion relation encodes several observable behaviours: its value gives the angular frequency, its origin-to-point slope gives the one-dimensional phase velocity, its tangent slope gives the group velocity, and variation of that tangent slope predicts distortion of a wave packet. A straight line through the origin describes a nondispersive wave; an affine branch with has constant group velocity but phase velocity , so those properties must be distinguished.
For and , the Fay solution becomes . The partial-fraction identity for the hyperbolic tangent sums this to the displayed smooth shock layer. It resolves the odd transition from to on angular thickness ; at both sides vanish and the comparison is read through their derivatives.
Hyperbolic function Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
Hyperbolic functions combine the exponential function to describe a hyperbola much as trigonometric functions describe a circle. Their two basic members are the hyperbolic cosine and hyperbolic sine, defined for every real number by
Their derivatives exchange the two functions:
These formulas follow by applying differentiation to the exponential function definitions. [ref]
Adding and subtracting gives and . Multiplying these equalities proves the hyperbolic Pythagorean identity:
Consequently the parametric equation traverses the entire right branch of the unit hyperbola , where . For example, gives , while gives approximately . Compare on the unit circle, where the squared coordinates add to one. The minus sign changes the geometry from a closed circle to an unbounded hyperbola.
Figure 1.
Hyperbolic cosine and sine become the coordinates of the right branch of a unit hyperbola
. The same inputs are marked on both function graphs and the unit hyperbola. The shaded region has area and corresponds to hyperbolic angle . Details.
The other members are ratios and reciprocals: hyperbolic tangent is , hyperbolic cotangent is , and hyperbolic secant is ; denominators must be nonzero. The hyperbolic sine and hyperbolic cosine both solve the second-order linear differential equation . In fact has and , making this basis convenient for an initial value problem. Their geometry also makes hyperbolic substitution useful for integrals containing , and the hyperbolic cosine gives the physical catenary of a hanging chain.
Consider a stipulated dilute collection of independent two-level systems, each with longitudinal magnetic moment , , and energy . The prescribed vacuum/applied magnetic flux density is . Ignore interactions, orbital magnetic response, and the small sample-field correction. This is the magnetic version of the existing independent spin-one-half two-level system, with alignment probabilities rather than an interacting Curie–Weiss model.
For temperature , the canonical ensemble gives the one-moment partition function , with . Taking the expected value over its two Boltzmann weights gives
Here is the number density, the Boltzmann constant, and the hyperbolic tangent. For , its small-argument expansion of the hyperbolic tangent gives , a Curie's law response in the applied- convention. For large , approaches the saturation magnetization with sign set by the field, and its differential magnetic susceptibility falls towards zero.
Both plots use stipulated , , , and . The moment is approximately one Bohr magneton; the chosen vacuum permeability is a rounded model input. At , and . The linear approximation overestimates by less than for , corresponding to or . These parameters keep the modeled response weak; neglected magnetic feedback is of relative order , rather than an explanation of a material's ordered phase.
Figure 1.
Magnetization approaching saturation magnetization, with its small-field linear range
. Original independent-moment calculation at stipulated . The shaded range has less than error relative to the exact magnetization. The second panel enlarges this range. The prescribed field is ; curves are model predictions, not measured data. Details.
Figure 2.
Bias-field and temperature dependence of the independent-moment differential magnetic susceptibility
. Original calculation using the same stipulated moments and number density. The left panel compares field sweeps at , and . The right panel compares temperature sweeps at prescribed , and . The zero-field slope follows Curie's law; cooling at fixed nonzero field eventually suppresses the slope through saturation magnetization. Details.
At , cooling increases the zero-field slope as . At fixed , cooling instead gives : a saturated moment can hardly change further. The order of the zero-field and zero-temperature limits matters. This independent model has no finite-temperature collective phase transition; the diverging zero-field slope alone does not establish one.
Consider an explicitly stipulated dilute independent spin-one-half two-level system with zero applied magnetic field. Each constituent has and , with constant signed gyromagnetic ratio . Ignore interactions and the specimen's own magnetic field. At positive temperature , thermal equilibrium with the rotating lattice gives energy levels . Define the dimensionless variable , where is the reduced Planck constant and is the Boltzmann constant. The partition function and Boltzmann distribution give
Taking the expected value gives
where is number density. This is the rotational version of the independent-moment magnetic response. The angular momentum aligns with positive rotation even when the magnetic moment points oppositely. The probability ratio provides a direct population check of the sign.
For , expand the hyperbolic tangent to obtain
The slope against is positive for either sign of , while the slope against has the sign of . At fixed , reversing reverses both means, and gives zero. At fixed nonzero , the formal limit saturates at ; the linear approximation must not be extrapolated there. At , the response vanishes. These limits describe the toy canonical ensemble, whose equilibration is assumed.
Figure 1. . Original calculated Independent spin Barnett response, with . The left panel reaches the formal saturation limits; the right panel is the extremely small-polarization room-temperature regime. The stipulated inputs describe a toy collection of independent spins; neither panel represents measurements of a ferromagnet or a fit to the gadolinium experiment. Details.
For a numerical example, stipulate , , , and rotation frequency . With , , and , the model gives
These are teaching inputs and calculated outputs, not measured material values. The corresponding internal angular momentum density is . Keeping a rotor at prescribed while its internal angular momentum changes requires the drive to supply the appropriate angular impulse. In an isolated body the mechanical part instead changes oppositely, as in magnetomechanical angular momentum balance. There is no creation of net angular momentum by choosing a rotating frame.
Choose six illustrative values , fixed mixture weights , known standard deviation , and initial means . These are constructed data for a Gaussian mixture distribution, not measurements. With the standard normal distribution probability density function, the fitted log-likelihood is
At the initial means, the component density ratio is . The first E-step therefore gives
Figure 1.
The first E-step retains two soft label probabilities at each chosen data point
. Initial means are minus one and one, mixture weights are one half, and the known standard deviation is one. Stacked bars show the two conditional label probabilities; every row sums to one. Small but nonzero probabilities remain visible in the numerical labels. Details.
The paired values and have complementary mixture responsibilities, so exactly. The first M-step gives
The hyperbolic tangent expression follows by pairing the contributions at and . Assigning every negative value wholly to the first mixture component and every positive value wholly to the second would instead give means . Those hard assignments discard the overlap: the expectation-maximization algorithm is not the same update as K-means clustering.
The observed-data log-likelihood rises from initially to after one update and after two. Further updates approach means , with log-likelihood approximately . These values describe this initialization; EM likelihood monotonicity supplies no certificate of a global maximum.
Figure 2.
Likelihood ascent and mean updates for the chosen data, compared with an identical-means initialization
. Iteration zero is the initial fit; each subsequent point follows one E-step and one M-step. Starting at minus one and one increases the likelihood. Starting both means at zero leaves them at zero with a lower constant likelihood. All runs keep variance one and weights one half. Details.
For stable numerical evaluation, put and . The log-sum-exp function gives
Subtracting keeps at least one exponential equal to one, avoiding the all-zero sum that direct evaluation of tiny component densities can produce.
The inequalities make this energy finite on . Since the second derivative of its scalar potential is , its Fréchet derivative is , with Taylor remainder between zero and half the squared norm of . The derivative operator is strictly monotone because the hyperbolic tangent is strictly increasing.
Because at , the factor cancels from the ratio. Write and . The exact answer is
At high temperature, . Expanding the hyperbolic tangent gives
The displayed leading expression is the ratio of classical Boltzmann factors for potential energy and . Indeed the classical canonical ensemble gives
The momentum Gaussian integral is independent of and cancels in the ratio. This is the classical phase-space limit of the thermal kernel. Here , with the Boltzmann constant; the associated classical position variance is . At fixed , ultimately tends to one as temperature tends to infinity, while its width grows.
At low temperature, . Now , so at fixed
Unlike the classical high-temperature expression, this limiting width remains nonzero at zero temperature, reflecting the ground state of the quantum harmonic oscillator.
Figure 1.
Imaginary-time stationary paths and the crossover of the diagonal thermal kernel
. Original plots of the equal-endpoint Euclidean oscillator path and the diagonal thermal kernel of a quantum harmonic oscillator, divided by its value at zero. Increasing lowers the temperature: the path spends more of its interior near zero, and the ratio approaches the finite-width ground state profile. Details.
Let . Differentiating the logarithm gives
For definiteness order . Then dominates as , while dominates as . The limiting states are
Without this ordering convention, and . Thus the states correspond to after matching each label to its dominant exponential; the propagation speed does not depend on the naming of the two states.
Their exponent difference is
Consequently, the Viscous Burgers travelling shock moves at
Set and . Factoring out the mean exponential gives the hyperbolic tangent profile
A precise measure of the width must be stated. The natural length in the hyperbolic tangent argument is
Thus the layer has thickness of order . A different common convention, jump divided by maximum gradient, gives ; the far-tail exponential e-folding length is . These differ only by their stated definitions, rather than by different solutions.
Two distinct limits require . The source permits arbitrary real constants, but in the degenerate case the solution is uniform, , and there is no shock wave or finite shock width.
Figure 1.
Calculated travelling shock profile and its tangent width; the horizontal coordinate moves with the shock
. Details.
Put . The hyperbolic tangent identity gives . Taking a compatible branch of the complex logarithm gives
As an identity for a single-valued inverse hyperbolic tangent, this requires consistent branch cuts; one cannot choose unrelated logarithm branches on the two sides. Near the branch with value zero is fixed by . The full inverse relation also allows , , and are singular points.
For , the separated integral is
Inverting gives
The upper branch has , where decreases towards as . The lower branch has , where decreases to as . These are separate maximal intervals: the pole is not part of a solution. For the domain , a lower-branch initial value below necessarily reaches that pole in finite positive . The direction field sketch above displays both exterior branches and a central hyperbolic tangent branch.
For a standard collinear Lorentz boost, put and . Its equations are and . Define the rapidity . Since and , and . Therefore
Adding and subtracting, and using , gives
A second boost multiplies these factors by , so the combined rapidity is . The hyperbolic tangent addition formula then gives the relativistic velocity addition law
Velocities are signed along the common axis, so this formula also covers oppositely directed boosts.
Put . For the Fay solution, . At the first harmonic therefore gives
which agrees with the late-time limit in (i).
For the opposite limit, expand the reciprocal hyperbolic sine as a geometric series and interchange absolutely convergent sums at every :
This exact positive-denominator form is useful near the shock. For small and , expand the denominator of the terms with small and use . The leading sum is
For the shock-layer scaling , the passage to this sum follows from dominated convergence: and for small provide a summable bound proportional to . The same leading expression matches the outer small-angle range . More generally, split the exact sum at with : the low terms have vanishing relative Taylor error, while the discarded exact and approximate tails are smaller than the leading expression by .
Now apply the partial-fraction identity for the hyperbolic tangent with :
The Fay shock-layer asymptotics are therefore
The angular shock thickness is , and its matched states are . At , both formulas vanish; the limiting slopes agree. The denominator throughout this derivation is as printed in the PDF, not the erroneous in the converted TeX.
An odd number of inhibitory connections gives . Write . The cube roots of have arguments , so
The real mode is always damped. The pair has negative real part precisely when , giving
for strict linear asymptotic stability. For the origin is unstable to an oscillatory mode.
At the eigenvalues are and . Thus the linear oscillation frequency is and its period is . Varying crosses the imaginary axis transversely, since .
The hyperbolic tangent has a negative cubic saturation and no quadratic term. To check the nonlinear onset, let be a critical complex eigenvector of and its normalized adjoint eigenvector, with . For this weighted cycle, . Since , the cubic derivative evaluated on has projection
Its real part is strictly negative. With no quadratic contributions, this gives a negative first Lyapunov coefficient: the generic onset is a supercritical Hopf bifurcation, with a small attracting periodic orbit just beyond the threshold. Exactly at threshold the linear system has undamped oscillations, but nonlinear cubic damping makes sufficiently small oscillations decay; one must not infer a nonzero sustained cycle at the critical parameter solely from the imaginary eigenvalues.
Use the inverse Lorentz transformation
Along the particle's worldline , so the relativistic velocity-addition formula is
For subluminal collinear velocities, put , and . The hyperbolic tangent addition formula, obtained by dividing the supplied sine/cosine addition formulas, gives
Because hyperbolic tangent is injective on the real line,
Thus rapidity is additive even though velocity is not.
Each positive increment in the instantaneous rest frame adds the same rapidity . Starting from zero rapidity, iterated collinear boosts with equal rapidity give
Every finite number of increments leaves ; the speed of light is approached as .
For the simple symmetric random walk, independence and the Rademacher distribution give the moment-generating function
The function is even; for its derivative is , since the derivative of is at most one and . Here and are the hyperbolic cosine and hyperbolic tangent. Hence the exponential-moment estimate is
The supplied exponential maximal bound for a symmetric random walk now gives . For , choose ; for , use the elementary bound by one. Thus
Fix , choose , and set . For large these form an increasing sequence. Apply the preceding exponential maximal bound for a symmetric random walk at with threshold . The resulting probability is at most
We have and . Choose strictly between and ; the displayed probabilities are . By the Borel-Cantelli first lemma, almost surely, eventually . For every , monotonicity of for large therefore gives
Intersect the probability-one events for to obtain the upper law of the iterated logarithm:
Use the Minkowski metric with signature , and write . The Euler-Lagrange equation is
For the static phi-four kink, and , so the field equation is satisfied. The centre is arbitrary by translation invariance, and the hyperbolic tangent profile increases monotonically from to , crossing zero at . The static kink and its endpoint topological charge are
Figure 1.
The phi-four kink rises between the two vacuum values and crosses zero at its centre
. Details.
Both endpoint values are isolated classical vacua, since only at . A continuous finite-energy deformation preserving the vacuum boundary conditions cannot change either endpoint to the other isolated classical vacuum. The topological charge is therefore unchanged: this kink cannot deform into a homogeneous classical vacuum, whose charge is zero. There is also a direct Bogomolny bound in this sector. The square completion for a one-dimensional kink gives
The phi-four kink saturates the bound, so its mass is in these units and it minimizes the energy within its topological sector. Its arbitrary position is a collective coordinate, not an instability. A kink and an antikink together have total charge zero and can annihilate without contradicting the protection of an isolated kink.
For the momentum, the canonical stress-energy tensor of this scalar field is
Consequently the physical spatial momentum density and the spatial momentum flux are
The sign of makes a right-moving translated kink carry positive momentum. Direct use of the field equation, rather than an assumed static field, yields the scalar-field momentum flux identity
The finite-energy field configuration has by . Integrating the stress-energy conservation law over the left half-line gives the boundary force
Under the usual vacuum falloff, the stress at the left endpoint is zero. More generally, smooth spatial cutoffs with derivative of order remove the left endpoint using the integrable energy density, so no pointwise limit of every derivative at infinity is needed. The identity expresses the force on the field to the left of : positive force transfers momentum to the right. For well separated solitons, a cut between them measures the interaction force on the left soliton.
Take that cut at . The specified symmetric pair has, at the initial time,
The printed field profile does not itself specify the initial velocity. If , the exact initial half-line force is
For the intended initially resting pair, or more generally , put and use . The at-rest force for a symmetric phi-four pair is
The leading force is attractive, towards the antikink:
The antikink feels the opposite force by the symmetry of the resting pair. This is an initial, large-separation interaction calculation, not a claim that the superposed profile is an exact static two-soliton solution. Without the initial-velocity condition, the additional momentum flux above prevents a unique force from being inferred from the printed profile alone.
Take , , use metric and set . The two scalar-field vacua are ; the positive kink joins at the left end to at the right. The square completion for a one-dimensional kink gives
Thus its Bogomolny bound is . Equality requires ; separating variables, or differentiating the resulting hyperbolic tangent, gives
is the translational collective coordinate. The antikink is for the centered odd profile. Differentiating the first-order equation gives the static Euler-Lagrange field equation . Hence the Bogomolny equation really does solve the second-order theory. The two distinct vacua and the above kink require the positive parameters; the degenerate case , or the unstable negative- potential, does not have this topological kink sector.
For a slowly moving kink, put . The saturated first-order equation implies , so
The stress-energy tensor has and . Using in the approximate translate therefore gives and . Equivalently, substitution into the action gives the collective-coordinate effective Lagrangian . These are the translational dynamics of a phi-four kink, with
The displayed remainder orders refer to the exact constant-velocity solution. The uncontracted translated profile is only an approximation: its error as a field starts at , but the static profile is an energy stationary point, so the corresponding static-energy error starts at and does not change the displayed coefficient.
Since the relativistic action is invariant under Lorentz transformations, a Lorentz boost gives the exact moving kink, for ,
Its conserved energy and momentum are and , whose expansions agree with the preceding calculation. The width contraction is essential to solving the exact time-dependent equation.
Use the centered profile . An appropriate approximate separated-lump initial condition is
It tends to as and as . Near and it is a positive kink, and near zero it is an antikink; the other two tails cancel to exponentially small accuracy. The condition makes these interpretations accurate. This sum is legitimate smooth initial data, not an exact static multi-kink solution. Its topological charge is
and its energy is close to , with exponentially small interactions.
Adjacent kink–antikink pairs attract: the kink–antikink attraction from the stress tensor gives a negative midpoint pressure and hence an inward force on each outside kink. Direct overlap of the two outer kink tails is exponentially smaller than each adjacent kink–antikink overlap. The initial field is odd and its velocity zero, so the equation's reflection-plus-sign symmetry preserves . The central zero remains at and the outer cores move in symmetrically. They collide with the central antikink. Excess energy can excite localized kink oscillations and outgoing radiation; the usual relaxational outcome is a remaining centered kink plus radiation after transient collisions or oscillations. On an infinite line radiation can carry energy away from the core even though total energy is conserved. Conservation of prevents complete disappearance into vacuum, but it does not determine every bounce or exclude a temporarily re-emerging kink–antikink pair. The nonintegrable collision should not be described as exact elastic passage of all three solitons.
For a real steady amplitude, integrate the conserved-field equation twice. Periodicity forces the integration slope to vanish, and the zero mean fixes the remaining constant. Hence
Substituting this into the steady amplitude equation gives the nonlocal ordinary differential equation
For , use the hyperbolic secant identity . Vanishing of the two independent coefficients gives
Choose and ; an overall negative sign is another solution. Thus . The exact average of the proposed profile over the finite interval is
For , the hyperbolic tangent differs from one by , so . Eliminating gives the requested leading relation
Equivalently , with . Positive real roots exist precisely when ; they are and are reciprocal. Each candidate must additionally satisfy . For , the leading necessary range is , with equality at the coalescence . Away from this leading-order fold, the inequality is strict.
The strict finite-window condition can also be seen by retaining the average exactly. Its consistency relation is . Since , it implies , and hence
The strict endpoint distinction is exponentially small in the large- approximation; the leading polynomial alone permits its double root. When , this algebra imposes no finite upper bound on . The printed interval therefore needs : for example , gives a large positive root of the leading equation and , despite the printed upper endpoint being negative.
Finally, the single localized pulse of a conserved-field convection model is an approximate periodic solution. Its values agree at the interval ends, but its derivatives have opposite signs there; their magnitude is exponentially small, . Periodic-tail corrections are needed for an exact smooth periodic boundary condition. The range derived from the truncated profile is a consistency condition, not a proof that every permitted parameter gives an exact stable periodic pulse.
The condition implies . The small-argument expansion of the hyperbolic tangent gives , so
Using yields the entropic Hooke law for a one-dimensional chain
Thus the effective spring constant is .
At fixed tension, the exact extension is
Increasing the temperature decreases the positive argument of the hyperbolic tangent, so the chain contracts. In the small-extension regime this becomes
which is inversely proportional to .