ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some phenomena that are important in studying oscillations in bounded media. It presents a Unified Treatment of the problems, also including a detailed treatment of the effect of the anisotropic ionospheric conductivity on the wave. The problem can be reduced to a one-dimensional one, with the standing waves behaving analogously to waves on a stretched string. The chapter considers the standing waves that can exist in a very simple medium as an introduction to the treatment of the natural modes of oscillation of plasma regions in the solar-terrestrial system. In general, the two characteristic waves are coupled by the magnetic field and density inhomogeneity. There are, however, two extreme cases in which the isotropic and transverse waves are decoupled. The horizontal spatial variation is in the x-direction and the length scale is extremely small compared with the wavelength of the corresponding fast wave.
