Elastic Wave Propagation and Generation in Seismology

Bridging the gap between introductory textbooks and advanced monographs, this book provides the necessary mathematical tools to tackle seismological problems and demonstrates how to apply them. Including student exercises, for which solutions are available on a dedicated website, it appeals to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It is also a useful reference volume for researchers wishing to "brush up" on fundamentals before they study more advanced topics in seismology.

Seismology has complementary observational and theoretical components, and a thorough understanding of the observations requires a sound theoretical background. This book bridges the gap between introductory textbooks and advanced monographs by providing the necessary mathematical tools and demonstrating how to apply them. Each seismological problem is carefully formulated and its solution is derived in a step-by-step approach. The text includes student exercises (with hints), for which solutions are available on a dedicated website. This website also contains numerous downloadable programs for the computation of reflection and transmission coefficients, for the generation of P and S wave radiation patterns and synthetic seismograms, in infinite media. This book will therefore find a receptive audience among advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in developing a solid mathematical background to tackle more advanced topics in seismology. It will also form a useful reference volume for researchers wishing to brush up on the fundamentals.

Preface; 1. Introduction to tensors and dyadics; 2. Deformation: strain and rotation tensors; 3. The stress tensor; 4. Linear elasticity: the elastic wave equation; 5. Scalar and elastic waves in unbounded media; 6. Plane waves in simple models with plane boundaries; 7. Surface waves in simple models: dispersive waves; 8. Ray theory; 9. Seismic point sources in unbounded homogeneous media; 10. The earthquake source in unbounded media; 11. Anelastic attenuation; Appendix A. Introduction to the theory of distributions; Appendix B. The Hilbert transform; Appendix C. Green's function for the 3-D scalar wave equation; Appendix D. Proof of equation (9.5.12); Appendix E. Proof of equation (9.13.1); References; Index.

This text bridges the gap between introductory textbooks and advanced monographs by providing the necessary mathematical tools to tackle seismological problems, and demonstrating how to apply them. Complete with student exercises, this book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers wishing to revisit the fundamentals.