title: Supershear Rayleigh waves at a soft interface.
abstract: We report on the experimental observation of waves at a liquid foam surface propagating faster than the bulk shear waves. The existence of such waves has long been debated, but the recent observation of supershear events in a geophysical context has inspired us to search for their existence in a model viscoelastic system. An optimized fast profilometry technique allows us to observe on a liquid foam surface the waves triggered by the impact of a projectile. At high impact velocity, we show that the expected subshear Rayleigh waves are accompanied by faster surface waves that can be identified as supershear Rayleigh waves.
authors.affiliation: Microfluidique, MEMs et Nanostructures, UMR Gulliver 7083, ESPCI, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Le Goff
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires and IFIBA, CONICET, Ciudad Universitaria, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina and Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes PMMH, UMR CNRS 7636, ESPCI, UMPC Université Paris 6, UPD Université Paris 7, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cobelli
authors.affiliation: Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes PMMH, UMR CNRS 7636, ESPCI, UMPC Université Paris 6, UPD Université Paris 7, Paris, France and Departamento de Física, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lagubeau