The leading source displacement field is
The second term is one derivative smoother at the leading arrival. At each surface point, use its tangent plane, the angles from (i)–(ii), and the local solid-fluid P-wave transmission coefficient. The incident potential coefficient is , so the transmitted leading potential coefficient is
Transport this coefficient along the vertical fluid rays. Their transverse area does not change with height, so ray-tube conservation for a P-wave jump gives no further geometrical spreading. The leading displacement field coefficient is consequently
This is the transmitted jump at a collimating solid-fluid interface. Radial derivatives of multiply , and therefore do not contribute to the first derivative jump carried by . A varying transverse wave amplitude does generate smoother later terms, so this construction is a leading-front result, not a complete global plane-wave field.
Since the source is zero before and is there, . Thus displacement field itself does not jump. If exists and is the first nonzero jump, the leading discontinuity is the acceleration jump . More generally, a first jump in gives . The supplied regularity alone does not guarantee a nonzero discontinuity: a source smooth to all orders may have none. The geometrical transfer factor is nevertheless determined.
At , and all three angles vanish. Hence
For large , put and retain , . The relevant limits are
When , the square-bracket factor in the denominator of is , so
These are signed waveform coefficients; their absolute values give wave amplitude magnitudes. The leading displacement field decays as rather than because grazing incidence adds a small transmission factor to spherical spreading. The leading coefficient is independent of fluid and solid mass densities, although the exact wave amplitude and its higher-order terms depend on them.
The assumptions do not exclude , where and the preceding division is invalid. In this special case exactly, and the square-bracket factor is . Keeping both denominator terms gives
It has no term. This exceptional case matters when requesting an asymptotic formula without an additional restriction on the elastic moduli.
Figure 1.
Hyperbolic refraction into vertical rays and the leading transmitted displacement field coefficient compared with its grazing-incidence asymptote
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