Author(s)

J. Steinhoff, M. Fan & L. Wang.

Abstract

A new method is described to compute short acoustic or electromagnetic pulses that propagate according to geometrical optics. The pulses are treated as zero thickness sheets that can propagate over long distances through inhomogeneous media with multiple reflections. The method has many of the advantages of Lagrangian ray tracing, but is completely Eu- lerian, typically using a uniform Cartesian grid. Accordingly, it can treat arbitrary configurations of pulses that can reflect from surfaces and pass through each other without requiring special computational marker arrays for each pulse. Also, information describing the pulses, which are treated as continuous surfaces, can be available throughout the computational grid, rather than only at isolated individual markers. The method uses a new type of representation, which we call "Dynamic Surfa

Keywords