Take to be the vertical equilibrium plane and expand the vertical gravitational force to leading order in : . The vertical hydrostatic equilibrium equation for uniform density is . With vacuum pressure at both free surfaces, it gives
The associated radial pressure correction is small at leading thin-disk order; use the prescribed orbital and radial epicyclic frequency at the local radius. Here is the vertical epicyclic frequency.
For the axisymmetric waves of a homogeneous incompressible disk, use a local WKB approximation proportional to , with . Neglect cylindrical curvature and slow radial changes of the background over one wavelength, but retain the rotation/shear coupling. Let be the velocity perturbations and . The leading equations are
For and , these give and . The incompressible flow constraint then yields
The vertical Lagrangian fluid displacement satisfies , so . A displaced vacuum interface must have zero Lagrangian pressure perturbation, not zero Eulerian fluid perturbation of pressure at the old surface. Neglecting the higher-order radial surface-slope contribution,
Thus the free-surface pressure condition of an incompressible disk is
Because the background and boundary conditions are symmetric about the midplane, choose pressure modes of even function or odd function symmetry in . For , put and . The solutions are or ; substituting the surface condition gives the two surface modes of an incompressible disk:
These are implicit dispersion relations, or complete parametric equations with parameter and the indicated condition .
For , put and . The solutions are or , giving the inertial modes of an incompressible disk:
The restrictions select the admissible segments of the trigonometric functions, producing infinitely many vertical orders. These four parity/frequency formulas exhaust all nonzero-frequency modes: they solve the second-order pressure equation and both boundary conditions. For finite , an exactly epicyclic frequency makes the horizontal equations require , then the vertical equation and the incompressible flow constraint force all velocity components to vanish, so it is not a missing finite-wavenumber branch.
For completeness, the energy identity for free-surface disk waves shows why these modes have real stable frequencies when and . After elimination of the azimuthal velocity, the radial and vertical displacement equations are and , with . Multiply by conjugate displacements, integrate in and use the boundary condition to obtain
The right side is real and nonnegative, excluding additional growing wave branches in this stable case. At zero frequency there can separately be a stationary geostrophic balance: vertically constant , , , and static interface displacements satisfying at the surfaces. This neighbouring-equilibrium perturbation is not a propagating branch omitted by dividing by .
For the large- limit, the two surface branches have , so both and tend to one. Eliminating gives their common leading surface dispersion,
In particular . The effective surface gravity is , and the pressure decays into the interior on a scale . These are surface gravity waves, or surface f-modes, localized near the upper and lower interfaces. Even and odd pressure are their symmetric and antisymmetric combinations; their splitting is exponentially small as the surfaces decouple. Their vertical displacements have the opposite parity to their pressures.
For each fixed inertial vertical order, large means . The boundary condition then requires at the surfaces, so the limiting vertical wavenumbers are , . Thus
Even have even pressure, odd odd pressure. These vertically oscillatory, rotation-restored inertial waves occupy and approach zero at fixed order as radial wavenumber increases. The limit is not uniform in order: arbitrarily high vertical orders remain near at any fixed . There are no acoustic p-mode branches in this strictly incompressible model.
For , the two surface curves are unique. The even branch approaches from above as , with tending to the positive solution of . The odd branch approaches because as . At any positive , the odd surface frequency is above the even one, and both rise toward the common large-wavenumber asymptote.
The inertial branches all approach from below as . For even pressure there is one admissible branch in each interval , , terminating at as . For odd pressure there is one in each interval , again terminating at its upper endpoint; the first interval is admissible because . Their curves decrease toward zero as shown in the sketch. The small- endpoints are formal local-dispersion limits; the WKB approximation still requires for a finite-thickness disk.
Figure 1.
Surface and inertial branches of a homogeneous incompressible disk, with
. Details.
The plot shows both surface branches and the lowest six inertial orders; higher orders accumulate below . If , the inertial frequencies collapse to zero, while the surface formulas reduce to and . A negative instead introduces instability described by the Rayleigh centrifugal stability criterion and is outside the real-frequency stable sketch.
Use incompressibility, negligible viscosity and surface tension, and an initially irrotational flow. Take the undisturbed free surface at and bed at . The velocity potential satisfies Laplace equation and . For a Fourier mode, write
The linear kinematic boundary condition and linear Bernoulli equation at the free surface are and . Eliminating gives the surface gravity wave dispersion relation
The rightward phase velocity and group velocity are
The phase velocity transports a crest; the group velocity transports a narrow-band envelope and its leading-order energy. For , and : deep-water surface gravity waves are dispersive. For , and , the nondispersive shallow-water dispersion relation. The boundary velocity controls the excited amplitude; it does not change the linear dispersion relation.
In seawater, freezing produces nearly salt-free solid and leaves salt in the interstitial liquid. The growing cover is therefore a mushy layer, with sea-ice crystal fabric determined by both crystal growth and the mechanical history. Crystallographic c-axes are perpendicular to the plates' basal planes; grain elongation and c-axis orientation must not be confused.
For first-year sea ice growing by congelation, heat loss first brings the surface water to its salinity-dependent freezing point. Small frazil ice crystals may form and collect into a thin continuous sheet, or a quiet surface can freeze directly; the resulting nilas provides the initial cover. Once the water surface is protected from strong agitation, heat transported by heat conduction upward through the sheet permits freezing onto its underside. Competitive growth favors grains with fast basal-plane growth directed downward, so grains with approximately horizontal c-axes crowd out less favorably oriented grains. The mature congelation ice consists predominantly of long vertical columns beneath a finer initial surface layer. Within and between these grains, the advancing cellular interface traps brine-bearing spaces. The growth sequence and crystallographic selection explain why the resulting texture is columnar rather than a random aggregate of floating crystals.
For pancake ice, wind and surface gravity waves prevent an uninterrupted ice sheet. Supercooled surface water produces suspended frazil ice; crystals accumulate into grease ice and then small coherent cakes. Wave-induced convergence, collisions and repeated accumulation of frazil increase cake size and thickness. Collisions and overwash deposit slush around the margins, building the characteristic raised rims. The crystal aggregate is predominantly granular, with much less systematic orientation than in congelation ice. A calmer interval can add a columnar basal layer, so a pancake need not be purely granular throughout. Observed pancake structures include frazil layers, basal congelation growth and rafted cakes.
In Antarctic consolidated pancake ice, the active edge initially follows this frazil-pancake route. As concentration rises and waves are attenuated, pancakes jam, raft and become frozen together, with interstitial frazil filling the gaps. The consolidated sheet retains overlapping cake outlines, stacked granular layers and an irregular underside, rather than acquiring the simple fabric of a single quiet-water-grown sheet. Later basal freezing can add congelation ice, but the granular fraction often remains large. Snow loading or overwash can flood the top; freezing this slush adds granular snow ice, a separate contribution from seawater-derived frazil. These mechanisms produce the heterogeneous sea-ice crystal fabric documented in cores from the Antarctic marginal ice zone. Quiet basal growth produces columnar ice; wave-driven aggregation and consolidation produce predominantly granular, layered ice.
The main efficient net desalination mechanisms require transport through the ice boundary. In gravity drainage of sea-ice brine, cold saline liquid is denser than the water below, so a connected permeable pore network permits downward flow and compensating entry of less saline seawater. Dense brine can collect into channels and convective drainage pathways. For a layer of depth , a Darcy law estimate of drainage speed is , giving a drainage time and showing directly why permeability of a porous medium and buoyancy matter. Warm, brine-rich ice drains much more readily than cold ice whose pores have become poorly connected. This is important during growth and can intensify as warming reconnects channels; an isolated sealed brine pocket cannot drain merely because its liquid is dense. The connectivity constraint is supported by sea-ice permeability measurements.
In meltwater flushing of sea ice, water supplied by surface snow melt or melt ponds has a hydraulic head above sea level and percolates down connected pores and cracks, displacing brine. It can remove salt rapidly in warm summer ice. Its limits are the supply and head of meltwater and pore connectivity; lateral runoff may reduce the amount available for vertical flushing. Gravity-driven drainage can act without surface melting, whereas flushing cannot.
Brine expulsion occurs when additional freezing and solid expansion pressurize an inclusion and force liquid into nearby passages. This is often internal redistribution: expelling brine from one inclusion does not desalinate the entire floe unless that liquid reaches the ocean. Migration of brine inclusions involves melting on a warmer wall and refreezing on the colder wall; molecular salt diffusion through liquid connections is also possible. These slow processes are far less effective at exporting bulk salt than connected advective drainage. Diffusion through the ice lattice itself is extremely slow. Likewise, excluding salt from each growing crystal is not by itself proof of salt loss from a whole ice-brine mixture. Desalination experiments and transport calculations distinguish net salt export from internal redistribution. Gravity drainage dominates desalination of permeable growing ice; meltwater flushing can dominate summer desalination; expulsion, inclusion migration and diffusion are comparatively ineffective without a boundary-crossing flow.
For small irrotational surface gravity waves, write the velocity field as . Incompressibility gives . The rigid walls have at , at , and at . At , the linear kinematic boundary condition and pressure condition are
Separate variables for a rectangular standing surface-gravity mode:
The horizontal cosine factors and vertical hyperbolic cosine satisfy all rigid-wall conditions. Put and . The free-surface conditions give and , hence
Both integers are nonnegative and not both zero. The zero pair would be a spatially uniform displacement, excluded by fixed fluid volume; a spatially constant potential is only a gauge mode.
Assume small-amplitude motion, a thin uniform elastic plate, no prestress, and inviscid, irrotational deep water. Write the upward displacement as , the ice mass per unit area as , and its flexural rigidity as
where is Young's modulus and is Poisson's ratio. The plate equation is , where is the perturbation of upward water pressure.
Let the water velocity potential be below the mean surface , with . This solves the Laplace equation and decays at depth. For , the kinematic boundary condition gives . The linear Bernoulli equation gives
Eliminating proves the dispersion relation of a floating elastic plate:
Thus the desired wavenumber is the positive root of
For positive and , this root is unique: the polynomial is negative at zero and positive eventually; if its derivative starts negative, that derivative crosses zero only once, at a negative-valued minimum before the positive root. If a finite water depth is required, the corresponding relation is .
Put and . Differentiation gives the group velocity
For long periods, the surface gravity wave limit gives . At sufficiently short periods, plate inertia and bending dominate, and . Consequently the curve has a group-velocity minimum of a flexural-gravity wave between branches that rise toward both long and short periods, within the formal deep-water plate model. Very short waves eventually fall outside the thin-plate approximation.
Figure 1.
Group and phase speed for an illustrative elastic ice sheet
. Details.
The plot is an original model illustration with , , , , , and . Its two minima occur at different periods.
A wave packet near the group-speed minimum carries energy away relatively slowly, so sustained forcing can concentrate energy in that period band. However, wind generation cannot be decided from alone. A steadily translating pressure pattern resonates through its phase velocity ; it must reach the minimum phase speed of a flexural-gravity wave. Actual wind-wave growth also requires suitable pressure coupling and enough energy input to overcome damping. A coherent cover suppresses ordinary free-surface wave generation, while incoming ocean swell can still excite bending and break the cover.
For disconnected pancake ice or frazil ice, remove the assumption of coherent elastic bending and retain the effective mass loading as a first conservative approximation. Setting gives . To describe damping as well, replace the elastic layer by a viscous suspension and match velocity and stress to the water beneath: the resulting viscous layer model of frazil-pancake ice has complex , whose real part gives dispersion and imaginary part gives attenuation. Keller's 1998 two-layer model implements this replacement. Effective viscosity and connectedness must reflect the particular cover; zero rigidity alone does not model attenuation.
The sea ice acts as a frequency-selective filter. Over a long path, wave attenuation in sea ice is generally much stronger for shorter surface gravity waves, through repeated scattering, internal ice losses and water-side dissipation. Their amplitude can fall below the tiltmeter's detection level even if the source initially generated them. Thus the long-period swell survives while the shorter-period tail does not.
The disappearance near 14 s is an attenuation and detectability limit, not a forbidden-frequency interval of the ideal elastic plate. The flexural-gravity wave dispersion relation admits a real positive wavenumber for every positive angular frequency. In an impulsive-source picture, shorter-period deep-water gravity waves also arrive later because their group velocity is smaller, but delayed arrival alone does not explain a persistent observed cutoff.
It is important to distinguish loss of forward-going surface-gravity-wave energy from conversion of mechanical energy into heat. Scattering attenuation by ice floes redirects energy; it can attenuate a coherent transmitted wave without dissipating the total energy.
For fixed floe geometry, increasing frequency usually increases attenuation over the relevant swell range: shorter wavelengths respond more strongly to the contrast between water and the elastic plate, and to repeated floe edges. Long surface gravity waves have weak curvature and often penetrate much farther. This is a trend over a specified frequency range, not a theorem excluding resonances.
The diameter dependence is governed by . An ice floe much smaller than the wavelength moves nearly with the water and scatters weakly. Scattering becomes appreciable when floe size is comparable with the wavelength, and interference between its two edges can give maxima and minima. At fixed ice concentration, larger ice floes also mean fewer edges per unit propagation distance, roughly proportional to . Consequently the attenuation coefficient need not increase monotonically with diameter: the single-floe reflection and the number of encounters must both be considered. Thickness increases areal inertia as and bending stiffness as , generally increasing wave mismatch and reflection, although detailed frequency-dependent resonances again prevent a universal monotonic law.
When , particularly for frazil ice and pancake ice, weak individual scattering leaves other processes dominant. Relative crystal and water motion causes viscous dissipation; an aggregate layer can behave as a viscous or viscoelastic material, and pancake ice collisions, rubbing and overwash remove energy. Their importance depends on concentration and wave amplitude.
For a uniform continuous sheet with horizontal dimensions much greater than the wavelength, there are no repeated floe edges in its interior. A perfectly elastic sheet over inviscid water supports undamped flexural-gravity waves, so internal scattering is not an explanation of decay there. Real attenuation can instead arise from internal ice anelasticity or viscoelasticity, a dissipative sub-ice viscous boundary layer, turbulence, cracks and brine-related processes. Small-floe mixtures and continuous sheets require dissipation models beyond the isolated-floe scattering picture.
The denominators in part (v) vanish when the forcing frequency equals the natural surface gravity wave frequency
At this value, the initially quiescent resonant solution is
Both contain a term growing linearly in time. This is resonance: the pressure forcing repeatedly supplies energy in phase with the box's standing-wave mode. In the ideal inviscid linear model there is no damping or nonlinear saturation, so its amplitude is unbounded. This is the resonance of a pressure-forced rectangular surface-gravity mode.
Take the undisturbed surface to be and treat , , and their induced velocities as first order in wave amplitude. Products of first-order quantities are second order and are discarded. Evaluating surface conditions at differs from evaluation at zero only by second-order terms. Thus the linearized surface gravity wave problem is
Here , . The linear free-surface conditions can also be combined into at zero.
Put . The squared Froude numbers follow directly from the discharge relation:
Thus the jump connects supercritical flow to subcritical flow. Long surface gravity waves have speed relative to the fluid, so the characteristic speeds in the stationary frame are . Upstream both point with the flow; downstream one points against it. The jump changes whether long-wave information can propagate upstream through the local flow.
Phase velocity Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The phase velocity is the motion of a constant-wave phase surface. For a one-dimensional plane wave with real and real , fixing gives
Each wave crest of this monochromatic travelling wave advances at that signed phase velocity. Its magnitude is the phase speed , where is the wavelength and is the temporal period when . Choosing makes positive mean rightward phase velocity and negative mean leftward phase velocity. Reversing both signs leaves the real plane wave and its phase velocity unchanged. At there are no spatial crests to track, so is undefined; a finite limit as is a limiting phase speed, not the speed of a spatially uniform oscillation.
In several dimensions, a plane wave has wave phase . Constant-wave phase planes obey . Their normal phase velocity is
Tangential motion within a plane does not move that wavefront, which is why the normal direction fixes the vector convention. In an anisotropic medium the group velocity need not point along this wavevector. Likewise the horizontal phase velocity of a tilted wavefront is its crossing speed along a horizontal line, rather than a component of the normal phase velocity.
For the nondispersive wave branch , a wave crest and a wave envelope both move at . For deep-water surface gravity waves, gives and group velocity . With the illustrative choices and , the model predicts and . These are calculated values for negligible surface tension and sufficiently large , not measurements. A wave crest moves forward through the wave packet, so timing a crest does not time the packet's journey.
There is a direct laboratory meaning to this distinction. MIT's 2005 surface-wave lab uses a long water tank, a controllable hydraulic paddle, and an absorbing beach. Resistance probes convert submerged length into voltage; calibration converts their readouts into free surface elevation versus time. Two probes a known distance apart, backed by a ruler and stopwatch, let students time a wave crest and separately time a feature of the wave packet. The lab records depth and varies frequency and wave amplitude.[ref]
For a clean measurement of phase velocity, fit the periodic portion of both records or follow one identifiable wave crest. A phase difference is only known modulo : probe spacing below half the shortest relevant wavelength, or continuity while sweeping frequency, avoids assigning the wrong whole-cycle delay. Then compare the timed phase velocity with . Tracking pepper grains instead measures fluid-particle motion, which has a different meaning from either phase velocity or group velocity.
The Klein-Gordon packet velocities example makes the distinction especially sharp: its phase velocity exceeds , yet its narrow wave envelope moves below . A carrier wave labels successive oscillations; its speed alone does not establish information velocity. The front velocity depends on the full causal model, including angular frequencies far outside the carrier's narrow range.
For depth with , stationary surface gravity waves conserve frequency and alongshore wavenumber . Near shore their dispersion becomes , so . The shoreward ray has , giving the displayed integrated scaling. Rays approach normally, while equal-phase crests approach parallel to the shore and their shore-normal spacing shrinks as . These are asymptotics within the ray approximation; for , its slow-variation assumption eventually fails arbitrarily close to the endpoint.
Radiation stress 2026-10-14
The excess depth-integrated, time-averaged momentum flux of a surface gravity wave is its radiation stress. In deep water , so . The force per transverse width on a reflecting object is the incident plus reflected minus transmitted radiation stress. Reflection increases force because the reflected wave carries momentum in the opposite direction.
Scattering attenuation by ice floes Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
Interfaces between ice floes and open water reflect and redirect surface gravity waves. The effective attenuation depends on floe thickness, diameter, spatial arrangement and wave period. For very small diameter relative to wavelength, a floe responds nearly with the water and scatters weakly. Individual-floe interference and the number of interfaces per unit distance prevent a universal monotonic diameter law.
Consider fluid at rest with mean depth and a bottom displacement . The linearized free-surface boundary conditions at and moving-bottom kinematic boundary condition at give a periodic particular response and velocity potential
The bottom derivative fixes the signed response coefficient to the title formula. Here , , and the forcing must avoid . This equality is resonance with the natural finite-depth surface gravity wave; nonzero undamped resonant forcing has no bounded periodic solution. The response reverses phase below resonance. General initial data can add free surface gravity waves, which do not decay in this inviscid model. Near resonance the resulting wave steepness and particle excursions, rather than the bottom displacement alone, determine whether the linearization remains valid.
Surface-wave breaking Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
A surface gravity wave breaks when its smooth free-surface motion becomes unstable and overturns or forms a strongly dissipative front. In the nondispersive shallow-water approximation, intersecting compressive characteristic curves signal failure of a smooth simple wave; a hydraulic bore replaces it at the integral-model level. Dispersion can instead produce an oscillatory bore, while physical breaking involves turbulence and energy loss beyond the inviscid equations.
For an inviscid flow of constant mass density and depth , impose excess pressure with on a free surface. Neglect surface tension. A travelling solution of the linearized free-surface boundary conditions is
The velocity potential satisfies the Laplace equation and the bed no-penetration boundary condition. Its surface time derivative is , so the dynamic condition gives the displayed signed response. The nonnegative amplitude is . It is finite except at
the squared phase speed of a free surface gravity wave at that wavenumber. Equality produces resonance. This describes a travelling forced component; free surface gravity waves must be added to meet general initial conditions. At exact resonance, a solution of the initial value problem generally grows with time rather than having a bounded periodic amplitude.