Wave chaos and mode-medium resonances at long-range sound propagation in the ocean

We study how the chaotic ray motion manifests itself at a finite wavelength at long-range sound propagation in the ocean. The problem is investigated using a model of an underwater acoustic waveguide with a periodic range dependence. It is assumed that the sound propagation is governed by the parabolic equation, similar to the Schrodinger equation. When investigating the sound energy distribution in the time-depth plane, it has been found that the coexistence of chaotic and regular rays can cause a "focusing" of acoustic energy within a small temporal interval. It has been shown that this effect is a manifestation of the so-called stickiness, that is, the presence of such parts of the chaotic trajectory where the latter exhibit an almost regular behavior. Another issue considered in this paper is the range variation of the modal structure of the wave field. In a numerical simulation, it has been shown that the energy distribution over normal modes exhibits surprising periodicity. This occurs even for a mode formed by contributions from predominantly chaotic rays. The phenomenon is interpreted from the viewpoint of mode-medium resonance. For some modes, the following effect has been observed. Although an initially excited mode due to scattering at the inhomogeneity breaks up into a group of modes its amplitude at some range points almost restores the starting value. At these ranges, almost all acoustic energy gathers again in the initial mode and the coarse-grained Wigner function concentrates within a comparatively small area of the phase plane. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.