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Self-stabilized fractality of seacoasts through damped erosion
B Sapoval1, A Baldassarri, A Gabrielli
1Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée, CNRS Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France.
Abstract:
Erosion of rocky coasts spontaneously creates irregular seashores. But the geometrical irregularity, in turn, damps the sea waves, decreasing the average wave amplitude. There may then exist a mutual self-stabilization of the wave amplitude together with the irregular morphology of the coast. A simple model of such stabilization is studied. It leads, through a complex dynamics of the earth-sea interface, to the appearance of a stationary fractal seacoast with a dimension close to 4/3. Fractal geometry here plays the role of a morphological attractor directly related to percolation geometry.
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