Splashes in isotropic media

TL;DR

This paper explains how localized perturbations in isotropic media generate splash patterns through interference of collective excitations, influenced by phase and group velocities, with implications for water, electron gases, and superfluid helium.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework linking extremal velocities of excitations to splash features in isotropic media, including superfluid helium and electronic systems.

Findings

Splash features are governed by extremal phase and group velocities.

Negative group velocities can lead to converging wavefronts.

The theory applies to water, electron gases, and superfluid helium.

Abstract

The response of a medium to a sudden localized perturbation (a "splash") will be explained for isotropic media within the framework of linear response theory. In this theory splashes result from the interference of the collective excitations of the medium, with the outcome determined by the interplay between their phase and group velocities as well as the sign of the latter. The salient features of splashes are controlled by the existence of extremal values of the phase and the group velocities: the group velocity gives the expansion rate of the locus of the points where new wavefronts nucleate or existing ones disappear, while the phase velocity determines the large-time expansion rate of a group of wavefronts. If the group velocity is negative in a spectral range and takes on a minimal value within it, then converging wavefronts will be present in the splash. These results are relevant to the studies of several experimentally viable setups, such as a splash on the surface of deep water due to a small pebble or a raindrop, a splash in the two-dimensional electron gas caused by a short voltage pulse applied with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope, or a bulk splash in superfluid $^{4}He$ due to formation of an electron bubble. Specifically, the gross features of the latter are determined by five extremal velocities. Additionally, due to the existence of a negative group velocity spectral range, some of the wavefronts in superfluid $^{4}He$ splash are converging.