Paper 3, Section II, B
Derive the ray-tracing equations for the quantities and during wave propagation through a slowly varying medium with local dispersion relation , explaining the meaning of the notation .
The dispersion relation for water waves is , where is the water depth, , and and are the components of in the horizontal and directions. Water waves are incident from an ocean occupying onto a beach at . The undisturbed water depth is , where are positive constants and is sufficiently small that the depth can be assumed to be slowly varying. Far from the beach, the waves are planar with frequency and with crests making an acute angle with the shoreline.
Obtain a differential equation (with defined implicitly) for a ray and show that near the shore the ray satisfies
where and should be found. Sketch the shape of the wavecrests near the shoreline for the case .