In many cases these sites have caused, or have the potential to cause, significant groundwater contamination. The studies are being conducted in part by use of scaled physical models, using electrical and thermal scaling criteria that have been developed in the author's laboratory. A further research project deals with infrared wave propagation in micromachined waveguides. The electromagnetic equations and the techniques for solving them are closely related to those that occur for wave propagation when in-situ heating inhomogeneous geological formations. The physical scale is, however, eight orders of magnitude smaller.
Potential applications are in communications, sensors, and optical computers.