Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2004 / iii / Paper 72 / 3 / d

At a fixed material point, freeze the incremental elastic moduli at their local values and fix a unit propagation direction $\nu$. For an arbitrary nonzero polarization $m$, the rank-one matrix $a_{i\alpha }=m_i{\nu }_{\alpha }$ annihilates the added quadratic minor null Lagrangian, sinceThe assumed positivity therefore givesThus the acoustic tensor is positive-definite; this is strong ellipticity in elasticity. Major symmetry also makes it a real symmetric matrix. By the spectral theorem for real symmetric matrices, it has three real positive eigenvalues $q_1,q_2,q_3$ and an orthonormal basis of real polarizations $m^{(1)},m^{(2)},m^{(3)}$. ThereforeEach polarization gives a real plane wave profile through the equation of part (a), in either sign of the propagation speed. Repeated eigenvalues still admit three independent polarizations; the claim is not that the three speeds must be distinct. For an inhomogeneous base deformation these are local, frozen-coefficient wave modes, rather than exact plane waves throughout the entire body.