Computational High Frequency Wave Propagation

Numerical simulation of high frequency acoustic, elastic or electromagnetic wave propagation is important in many applications. When the wavelength is short compared to the overall size of the computational domain direct simulation using standard wave equations is very expensive. Fortunately, there are computationally much less costly models that are good approximations precisely for very high frequencies. In this talk we focus on the geometrical optics approximation which describes the infinite frequency limit of wave equations. We discuss numerical methods for geometrical optics, from the traditional techniques of ray tracing to more recent numerical procedures based on partial differential equations.