Bücher der Reihe Synthesis Lectures on Wave Phenomena in the Physical Sciences

This is an introductory book about nonlinear waves. It focuses on two properties that various different wave phenomena have in common, the "e;nonlinearity"e; and "e;dispersion"e;, and explains them in a style that is easy to understand for first-time students.Both of these properties have important effects on wave phenomena. Nonlinearity, for example, makes the wave lean forward and leads to wave breaking, or enables waves with different wavenumber and frequency to interact with each other and exchange their energies.Dispersion, for example, sorts irregular waves containing various wavelengths into gentler wavetrains with almost uniform wavelengths as they propagate, or cause a difference between the propagation speeds of the wave waveform and the wave energy.Many phenomena are introduced and explained using water waves as an example, but this is just a tool to make it easier to draw physical images. Most of the phenomena introduced in this book are common to all nonlinear and dispersive waves.This book focuses on understanding the physical aspects of wave phenomena, and requires very little mathematical knowledge. The necessary minimum knowledges about Fourier analysis, perturbation method, dimensional analysis, the governing equations of water waves, etc. are provided in the text and appendices, so even second- or third-year undergraduate students will be able to fully understand the contents of the book and enjoy the fan of nonlinear wave phenomena without relying on other books.

This book is to help post-graduate students to get into gravitational wave astronomy. We assume the knowledge of General Relativity theory, though we will concentrate on the physics and often omit mathematically strict derivations. We provide references to already existing literature where possible, this helps us to see a broad picture, skipping the details. The uniqueness of this book is in that it covers three frequency bands and three major world-wide efforts to detect gravitational waves. The LIGO and Virgo scientific collaboration has detected first gravitational waves and the merger of black holes become now almost a routine. We do expect many discoveries yet to come, especially in the joined gravitational and electromagnetic observations. LISA, the space-based gravitational wave observatory, will be launched around 2034 and will be able to detect thousands of GW sources in the milli-Hz band. Pulsar timing array observations have accumulated 20-years' worth of data and we expected detection of GWs in the nano-Hz band within the next decade. We describe the gravitational wave sources and data analysis techniques in each frequency band.

Gravitational wave (GW) research is one of the most rapidly developing subfields in experimental physics today. The theoretical underpinnings of this endeavor trace to the discussions of the "e;speed of gravity"e; in the 18th century, but the modern understanding of this phenomena was not realized until the middle of the 20th century. The minuteness of the gravitational force means that the effects associated with GWs are vanishingly small. To detect the GWs produced by the most enormously energetic sources in the universe, humans had to build devices capable of measuring the tiniest amounts of forces and displacements.This book delves into the exploration of the basics of the theory of GW, their generation, propagation, and detection by various methods. It does not delve into the depths of Einstein's General Relativity, but instead discusses successively closer approximations to the full theory. As a result, the book should be accessible to an ambitious undergraduate student majoring in physics or engineering. It could be read concurrently with standard junior-level textbooks in classical mechanics, and electromagnetic theory.

Proteins and macromolecular structures represent one of the most important building blocks for a variety of biological processes. Their biological activity is performed in a dynamic fashion, hence the concepts of waves and vibrations can help to explain how proteins function. This book has the goal of highlighting the importance of wave and vibrational phenomena in the realm of proteins. It targets younger students as well as graduate researchers who work in various scientific fields and are interested in learning how mechanical vibrations affect and drive the biological activity of proteins and macromolecular structures. Great attention is given to the computational approaches dedicated to the evaluation of protein dynamics and biological behavior, and modern experimental techniques are addressed as well. The book is written in a way that non-experts in the field can grasp most of the presented subjects. However, it is also based on the most relevant and recent scientific literature, providing a rather comprehensive library for the reader eager to know more about specific topics.