Light waves, photons; sound waves, phonons; water waves, "hydrons"?

jetwaterluffy

Light waves are made of photons; sound waves are made of phonons; so are water waves made of "hydrons", and if so, how would they behave, and would it be possible to make a water laser or something similar based on these particles.

Bill_K

They're called "ripplons".

ripplon n. A quantized capillary-tension wave at the surface of a liquid

DrChinese

We used to call them "squirt guns".

jetwaterluffy

Yep, that's what I meant.

Thanks for the name, Bill. I tried searching "ripplon" and couldn't find anything acessable. Do you have any suggestions of any sites which might give an introdution to them?

Bill_K

jetwaterluffy, Long-wavelength surface waves are driven by gravity, but as the wavelength gets shorter the effect of gravity becomes less important, and the waves are driven instead by surface tension (see "capillary wave" in Wikipedia). Quantized surface waves ("ripplons") are of this sort, and manifest themselves primarily in superfluid He, either on films or on the surface of bulk helium. I can only find this paper online that talks about the subject, but it's pretty high powered.

jetwaterluffy

Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier when I was reading a quantum gravity book. It said gravitons were hard to model because of turbulence at high amplitudes and wavelengths. I thought, just like water waves. It also said the gravitons would affect themselves because they affect anything with energy. I thought, water waves are like this too, as their wavelength depends on depth, which they themselves affect. They said it was hard to model gravitons that are not made of short wavelengths and amplitudes. Now, from looking at your post, it appears ripplons are like this too. So maybe studying water waves might tell them something about gravity. This, with the idea of making a water laser, is what got me interested in "hydrons" to start with.
Thanks for the explanation and the paper!