Equipartition and retrieval of Green's function

Abstract

Physical and mathematical arguments are presented for equipartition as the statistical state achieved by a random field, independent of its sources, in the limit of enough scattering. The arguments are simplest for the case of thermally excited fields, but are shown to apply also, with caveats, in non-equilibrium acoustics and seismology. Practical implications are discussed. © 2010 The Seismological Society of China and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.