Surface waves everywhere

TL;DR

This paper provides an accessible overview of surface waves at media interfaces, highlighting their diversity, similarities, and practical relevance, while also sharing the author's personal contributions to the field.

Contribution

It offers a non-technical introduction to surface waves, emphasizing their physical intuition and similarities across different types, including the author's own research contributions.

Findings

Surface waves occur at interfaces between different media.

Surface waves share common physical features despite different origins.

The author's contributions include new insights into surface wave phenomena.

Abstract

By "surface waves" one means a special kind of waves that propagate at the interface between two different media. There exists a large variety of such waves, which are interesting on their own, and sometimes have also practical importance and technological applications. This article presents a brief and non-exhaustive review of this vast subject, designed as an introduction to the field for nonspecialists. Similarities between surface waves of completely different origin will be outlined. I will be concerned with the physical picture and avoid math as strongly as possible (no differential equations and no boundary conditions), as well as many interesting details. My own contributions to this field will be also presented.