The statistics of nodal sets in wavefunctions

Project description

If a membrane vibrates at one of its resonance frequencies there are certain parts of the membrane that remain still. These are called nodal points and the collection of nodal points forms the nodal set. Building on earlier work this project will look at the statistical properties of the nodal set -- e.g. for 3-dimensional waves the nodal set consists of a collection of surfaces and one may ask questions about how the area of the nodal set is distributed for an ensemble of membranes or for an ensemble of different resonances of the same membrane. This project will involve a strong numerical component as wavefunctions of irregular membranes need to be found and analysed on the computer. Effective algorithms to find the area of the nodal set, or the number of domain in which the sign does not change (nodal domains) will need to be developed and implemented.