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Observation of solitary elastic surface pulses
A M Lomonosov1, P Hess, A P Mayer
1Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Heidelberg, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
Physical Review Letters
|February 28, 2002
Abstract:
The formation of solitary elastic surface pulses from laser-generated pulselike initial conditions is reported. The nonlinearity of the medium is compensated by both normal dispersion and anomalous dispersion, which were realized by coating isotropic fused silica by a metal and titanium nitride film, respectively. As an anisotropic material, silicon covered with an oxide layer was studied. The experimental results agree with numerical simulations carried out with a nonlocal evolution equation, which describes nonlinear propagation of surface acoustic waves in a dispersive medium.