Chapter 13: Standing Wave

Animation 1

The standing wave is a superposition of two traveling waves of equal magnitudes propagating in opposite directions. For example, if the reflection coefficient is +1, then the total electric field of the incident and the reflected waves in phasor form is

where E i is the incident electric field. This can be also written as

In the time domain,

This wave does not propagate since time and space are not found in a common argument of the form It has distinct nulls and maxima. The distance between two adjacent nulls is half wavelength.

Observe a standing wave for a reflection coefficient Γ = 1:


Animation 1: Standing (uniform plane ) wave.

 

Compare the previous animation of a standing wave with the animation of a traveling wave:


Animation 2: Traveling (uniform plane) wave.