From Japanese translation of E. Kreyszig, Advanced Engineering Mathematics, 8th ed. (E. クライツィグ著,阿部寛治訳,「フーリエ解析と偏微分方程式」,培風館,p.168-170.) This is a computer simlatoin of a vibration of an unit sqare membrane.
A wave equation of 2 dimension subject to boundary conditions $$u(x,y,t)=0 \text{ if $(x,y)ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '}' at position 20: …on the boundary}̲,\quad u(x,y,0)…$ the second and the third conditions are initial conditions.
Now we use a method of 'separation of variables'. Let and be a spatial part and a time dependent part of the solutoin : . By a standard procedure, we have an ODE (time dependent part), and a PDE (spatial part). The dot notation means that a differential with respect to , and the subscript means a partial derivative with respect to or .
The time dependent part is governed by the eigenvalue For a , we have an eigenfunctoin So the solution of the original equation which corresponds to is
The general solution of the equation is given as a superposition of . The coefficients and is given by the integrals and
A nodal curve of an eigenfunction of mode .
A density plot of the same function.
It is interesting that the same eigenvalue is attained by some different pairs of integers. For example, holds since . This happens when have two or more prime factors and which are congruent to modulo . These pairs of integers provide different eigenfunctions associated to the same eigenvalue . The followings are examples of such eigenfunctions.
To make an animation, first we prepare frames of animation.
I'm not sure that the following method is the best way to restrict a region to be drawn. (To use implicit plot).
There is a different way to make an animation. I generate many pictures, then I make an animation by using 'convert (in ImageMagick)' on the command line.