In physics, a plane wave is a special case of wave or field: a physical quantity whose value, at any moment, is constant through any plane that is perpendicular to a fixed direction in space. For any position in space and any time , the value of such a field can be written as where is a unit-length vector, and is a function that gives the field's value as dependent on only two real parameters: the time , and the scalar-valued displacement of the point along the direction . The displacement is constant over each plane perpendicular to . The values of the field may be scalars, vectors, or any other physical or mathematical quantity. They can be complex numbers, as in a complex exponential plane wave. When the values of are vectors, the wave is said to be a longitudinal wave if the vectors are always collinear with the vector , and a transverse wave if they are always orthogonal (perpendicular) to it. Often the term "plane wave" refers specifically to a traveling plane wave, whose evolution in time can be described as simple translation of the field at a constant wave speed along the direction perpendicular to the wavefronts. Such a field can be written as where is now a function of a single real parameter , that describes the "profile" of the wave, namely the value of the field at time , for each displacement . In that case, is called the direction of propagation. For each displacement , the moving plane perpendicular to at distance from the origin is called a "wavefront". This plane travels along the direction of propagation with velocity ; and the value of the field is then the same, and constant in time, at every one of its points. Sinusoidal plane wave The term is also used, even more specifically, to mean a "monochromatic" or sinusoidal plane wave: a travelling plane wave whose profile is a sinusoidal function. That is, The parameter , which may be a scalar or a vector, is called the amplitude of the wave; the scalar coefficient is its "spatial frequency"; and the scalar is its "phase".

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Related concepts (16)
Sine wave
A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or sinusoid is a mathematical curve defined in terms of the sine trigonometric function, of which it is the graph. It is a type of continuous wave and also a smooth periodic function. It occurs often in mathematics, as well as in physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields. Its most basic form as a function of time (t) is: where: A, amplitude, the peak deviation of the function from zero. f, ordinary frequency, the number of oscillations (cycles) that occur each second of time.
Field (physics)
In physics, a field is a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time. For example, on a weather map, the surface temperature is described by assigning a number to each point on the map; the temperature can be considered at a certain point in time or over some interval of time, to study the dynamics of temperature change. A surface wind map, assigning an arrow to each point on a map that describes the wind speed and direction at that point, is an example of a vector field, i.
Transverse wave
In physics, a transverse wave is a wave whose oscillations are perpendicular to the direction of the wave's advance. This is in contrast to a longitudinal wave which travels in the direction of its oscillations. Water waves are an example of transverse wave. A simple example is given by the waves that can be created on a horizontal length of string by anchoring one end and moving the other end up and down. Another example is the waves that are created on the membrane of a drum.
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