We verified in §C.3.1 above that traveling-wave components
and
in Eq.(C.14) satisfy the ideal string wave equation
. By definition, the physical string displacement is
given by the sum of the traveling-wave components, or
The state of an ideal string at
time
is classically specified by its displacement
and
velocity
for all
where
Inverting the two-by-two differential operator matrix yields left- and right-going slope waves as a function of an arbitrary initial slope and velocity:
Integrating both sides with respect to
where
Notice that if the initial velocity is zero, each of the initial traveling displacement waves is simply half the initial displacement, as expected. On the other hand, if the initial displacement is zero and there is a uniform initial velocity (the whole string is moving), the initial displacement-wave components are unbounded as the string length goes to infinity. Related discussion appears in Appendix E.
It will be seen in §C.7.4 that state conversion between physical variables and traveling-wave components is simpler when force and velocity are chosen as the physical state variables (as opposed to displacement and velocity used here).