phase velocity
Sign in to saveAlso known as phase speed
rate at which the phase of the wave propagates in space
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- speed
Show 4 more facts
- different from
- group velocity
- recommended unit of measurement
- metre per second
- Stack Exchange tag
- physics.stackexchange.com/tags/phase-velocity
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Frequency dispersion in groups of gravity waves on the surface of deep water. The ■ red square moves with the phase velocity, and the ● green circles propagate with the group velocity. In this deep-water case, the phase velocity is twice the group velocity. The red square overtakes two green circles when moving from the left to the right of the figure.
New waves seem to emerge at the back of a wave group, grow in amplitude until they are at the center of the group, and vanish at the wave group front.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “phase velocity” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.