Richard L. Weaver

Professor of Physics

Professor Richard Weaver received an A.B. degree in physics from Washington University in St Louis in 1971 and a Ph.D in astrophysics from Cornell University in 1977.  He came to Illinois in 1981 after a research associateship in theoretical elastic wave propagation and ultrasonics at Cornell.   He was elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1996 and received the Hetényi Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics in 2004.  He is associate editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.  Formerly a professor in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Illinois, he joined the Department of Physics in 2006.

Research Areas: stochastic waves, disordered and complex structures, quantum chaos, random matrix theory, ultrasonics, structural acoustics

Weaver Research Group

Current Research

Ultrasonic Analog for a Random Laser (with colleagues Oleg Lobkis, UIUC, and Alexey Yamilov, U Missouri) — We report measurements on ultrasonic systems analogous to random lasers. An auto-oscillating, and spontaneously emitting, piezoelectric device is found to emit more energetically when stimulated by an incident wave field. The emission is at the same frequency as the stimulating field, and with a phase relation corresponding to super radiance.  Over a wide range of parameters we observe narrow single emission lines, sensitivity to linear cavity properties, complex multi-mode emissions, and line narrowing.  Line widths are more narrow than we can measure. Theory suggests they have Schawlow–Townes widths as low as 10^-9 Hz. Systems of several such oscillators are observed to self-organize into a coherent state with power emission that rises faster than the first power of the number of oscillators.

Statistical Elastodynamics of Large Structures and Quantum Chaos (with Oleg Lobkis, UIUC, and Thomas Seligman, Centro de Ciencias Fisicas, UNAM) — Numerical simulations, analytic theory and laboratory measurements are used to study the statistics of linear waves in complex systems. Particular attention is paid to wave energy density (or probability for quantum waves), and its mean flow and fluctuations. We seek methods to predict mean flow and fluctuations over long times, based on information in ray optics or direct numerical simulations over short times.

Seismic Noise Correlations (with M Campillo, B van Tiggelen and E Larose, U Joseph Fourier, and O Lobkis UIUC and X Song UIUC Geology) — Recent attention to diffuse fields in seismology, inspired in part by laboratory experiments done at UIUC, is leading to new methods for probing the interior of the earth. We observe and exploit mesoscopic residual correlations in nominally incoherent multiply scattered elastic wave fields, on the moon, in the seismic coda, in local geophone noise, and in long period world-wide background seismicity. 

Determination of Thin-Film Interfacial Properties by Laser Generated Stress Waves (with N Sottos UIUC MatSE) — We investigate, both theoretically and experimentally, the generation of high-amplitude compression waves due to the sudden deposition of heat from a YAG laser pulse in a thin metallic film between two solids. The resulting pulse, with a duration of 10 nsec and a strain amplitude of the order of 1%, is measured using laser interferometry. Particular issues of concern include the effects of nonlinearity in the wave propagation and the corresponding development of shocks, and mode conversion at oblique interfaces with consequent generation of high-amplitude shear waves. Each of these effects is critical in ultimate application to the testing, by high-speed stress loading, of thin-film coatings.

Selected Recent Publications

R.L. Weaver, "Wave diffusion and mesoscopic dynamics, towards a universal time-dependent scattering matrix," New J. Phys. 9, (2007)

A Yamilov, R Weaver and O Lobkis, " On the Uaser," Photonics Spectra August 2006 p 90-94

R. Weaver and O. Lobkis "On the line width of the ultrasonic Larsen effect in a reverberant body", J Acoust Soc Am 120, 102-109 (2006)

R. Weaver, O. Lobkis and A. Yamilov, Entrainment and stimulated emission of auto-oscillators in an acoustic cavity, preprint

E Larose, O Lobkis, and R L Weaver, "Passive correlation Imaging of a buried scatterer," J Acoust Soc Am 119, 3549 (2006)

Gorin, Seligman, and Weaver, Scattering Fidelity in Elastodynamics, Phys Rev E 73 015202 (2006) preprint

R L Weaver, Transport and localization amongst coupled substructures, Phys Rev E 73 036610 (2006)

Nicholas Wolff & Richard L Weaver, "Toward a theory of wave energy transport in large irregular structures," J Acoust Soc Am 118 (1): 222-231(2005)

Richard L Weaver and Oleg I Lobkis "Diffuse fields in ultrasonics and seismology," Geophysics 71, S15-S19 (2006)

U. Kuhl, H.-J. Stockmann, R. Weaver, "Classical wave experiments on chaotic scattering," J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 38 10433-10463 (2005)

Richard Weaver, " Perspectives Geophysics, Information from Seismic Noise," Science 307 1568 (2005) Summary Full text

Honors and Awards

• Fellow, Acoustical Society of America
• Associate Editor, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Guest Editor, Ultrasonics 1997,1999,2001,2003
• Hetenyi Award, Society for Experimental Mechanics, 2002