Introduction

Abstract

Surface dynamics may be considered as a subject now over one hundred years old, since it was in 1887 that Lord Rayleigh first discussed the occurrence of localized waves at the surfaces of isotropic elastic media. Lattice dynamics of solids had its beginnings in the pioneering work of Born and von Kármán and Debye in 1913, and for the next half a century investigations concentrated mainly on the dynamics of infinite solids. It was only about a quarter of a century ago, that surface phenomena began to draw the attention of solid state physicists, and that continuum mechanics and lattice dynamics began to be applied to the dynamics of surfaces. The subject of elastic surface waves has continued to play an important role, first because it describes the continuum or long-wavelength limit of the microscopic description, but equally importantly because it has formed the foundation of the development of a variety of technological applications. For this reason the editors felt that this volume on surface phonons should appropriately begin with a chapter on surface acoustic waves. This is presented by Maradudin and Stegeman (Chap. 2), who lead us from a presentation of the underlying formalism, via the principal phenomena in piezoelectric and non-piezoelectric materials to a discussion of modern applications in acoustic and electrical signal processing.