Anisotropy

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WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation
Anisotropy /?�n?'s?tr?pi/, /?�na?'s?tr?pi/ is the property of being directionally
dependent, which implies different properties in different directions, as opposed
to isotropy. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes,
in a material's physical or mechanical properties (absorbance, refractive index,
conductivity, tensile strength, etc.)

An example of anisotropy is light coming through a polarizer. Another is wood,

which is easier to split along its grain than across it.

Contents
1 Fields of interest
1.1 Computer graphics
1.2 Chemistry
1.3 Real-world imagery
1.4 Physics
1.5 Geophysics and geology
1.6 Medical acoustics
1.7 Material science and engineering
1.8 Microfabrication
1.9 Neuroscience
1.10 Atmospheric radiative transfer
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
Fields of interest
Computer graphics
In the field of computer graphics, an anisotropic surface changes in appearance as
it rotates about its geometric normal, as is the case with velvet.

Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures

on surfaces that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the point of view.
Older techniques, such as bilinear and trilinear filtering, do not take into
account the angle a surface is viewed from, which can result in aliasing or
blurring of textures. By reducing detail in one direction more than another, these
effects can be reduced.

Chemistry
A chemical anisotropic filter, as used to filter particles, is a filter with
increasingly smaller interstitial spaces in the direction of filtration so that the
proximal regions filter out larger particles and distal regions increasingly remove
smaller particles, resulting in greater flow-through and more efficient filtration.

In NMR spectroscopy, the orientation of nuclei with respect to the applied magnetic
field determines their chemical shift. In this context, anisotropic systems refer
to the electron distribution of molecules with abnormally high electron density,
like the pi system of benzene. This abnormal electron density affects the applied
magnetic field and causes the observed chemical shift to change.
In fluorescence spectroscopy, the fluorescence anisotropy, calculated from the
polarization properties of fluorescence from samples excited with plane-polarized
light, is used, e.g., to determine the shape of a macromolecule. Anisotropy
measurements reveal the average angular displacement of the fluorophore that occurs
between absorption and subsequent emission of a photon.

Real-world imagery
Images of a gravity-bound or man-made environment are particularly anisotropic in
the orientation domain, with more image structure located at orientations parallel
with or orthogonal to the direction of gravity (vertical and horizontal).

Physics

A plasma lamp displaying the nature of plasmas, in this case, the phenomenon of
"filamentation"
Physicists from University of California, Berkeley reported about their detection
of the cosine anisotropy in cosmic microwave background radiation in 1977. Their
experiment demonstrated the Doppler shift caused by the movement of the earth with
respect to the early Universe matter, the source of the radiation.[1] Cosmic
anisotropy has also been seen in the alignment of galaxies' rotation axes and
polarisation angles of quasars.

Physicists use the term anisotropy to describe direction-dependent properties of

materials. Magnetic anisotropy, for example, may occur in a plasma, so that its
magnetic field is oriented in a preferred direction. Plasmas may also show
"filamentation" (such as that seen in lightning or a plasma globe) that is
directional.

An anisotropic liquid has the fluidity of a normal liquid, but has an average
structural order relative to each other along the molecular axis, unlike water or
chloroform, which contain no structural ordering of the molecules. Liquid crystals
are examples of anisotropic liquids.

Some materials conduct heat in a way that is isotropic, that is independent of

spatial orientation around the heat source. Heat conduction is more commonly
anisotropic, which implies that detailed geometric modeling of typically diverse
materials being thermally managed is required. The materials used to transfer and
reject heat from the heat source in electronics are often anisotropic.[2]

Many crystals are anisotropic to light ("optical anisotropy"), and exhibit

properties such as birefringence. Crystal optics describes light propagation in
these media. An "axis of anisotropy" is defined as the axis along which isotropy is
broken (or an axis of symmetry, such as normal to crystalline layers). Some
materials can have multiple such optical axes.

Geophysics and geology

Seismic anisotropy is the variation of seismic wavespeed with direction. Seismic
anisotropy is an indicator of long range order in a material, where features
smaller than the seismic wavelength (e.g., crystals, cracks, pores, layers or
inclusions) have a dominant alignment. This alignment leads to a directional
variation of elasticity wavespeed. Measuring the effects of anisotropy in seismic
data can provide important information about processes and mineralogy in the Earth;
indeed, significant seismic anisotropy has been detected in the Earth's crust,
mantle and inner core.

Geological formations with distinct layers of sedimentary material can exhibit

electrical anisotropy; electrical conductivity in one direction (e.g. parallel to a
layer), is different from that in another (e.g. perpendicular to a layer). This
property is used in the gas and oil exploration industry to identify hydrocarbon-
bearing sands in sequences of sand and shale. Sand-bearing hydrocarbon assets have
high resistivity (low conductivity), whereas shales have lower resistivity.
Formation evaluation instruments measure this conductivity/resistivity and the
results are used to help find oil and gas in wells.

The hydraulic conductivity of aquifers is often anisotropic for the same reason.
When calculating groundwater flow to drains[3] or to wells,[4] the difference
between horizontal and vertical permeability must be taken into account, otherwise
the results may be subject to error.

Most common rock-forming minerals are anisotropic, including quartz and feldspar.
Anisotropy in minerals is most reliably seen in their optical properties. An
example of an isotropic mineral is garnet.

Medical acoustics
Anisotropy is also a well-known property in medical ultrasound imaging describing a
different resulting echogenicity of soft tissues, such as tendons, when the angle
of the transducer is changed. Tendon fibers appear hyperechoic (bright) when the
transducer is perpendicular to the tendon, but can appear hypoechoic (darker) when
the transducer is angled obliquely. This can be a source of interpretation error
for inexperienced practitioners.

Material science and engineering

Anisotropy, in Material Science, is a material's directional dependence of a
physical property. Most materials exhibit anisotropic behavior. An example would be
the dependence of Young's modulus on the direction of load.[5] In such a case
anisotropy could be effectively measured directly from its stiffness tensor
independently of its origin which may for instance be its texture, randomness of
internal composition or defects. [6] Texture patterns are often produced during
manufacturing of the material. In the case of rolling, "stringers" of texture are
produced in the direction of rolling, which can lead to vastly different properties
in the rolling and transverse directions. Some materials, such as wood and fibre-
reinforced composites are very anisotropic, being much stronger along the
grain/fibre than across it. Metals and alloys tend to be more isotropic, though
they can sometimes exhibit significant anisotropic behaviour. This is especially
important in processes such as deep-drawing.

Wood is a naturally anisotropic (but often simplified to be transversely isotropic)

material. Its properties vary widely when measured with or against the growth
grain. For example, wood's strength and hardness is different for the same sample
measured in different orientations.

In the Mechanics of Continuum Materials, isotropy and anisotropy are rigorously

described through the symmetry group of the constitutive relation.[7]

Microfabrication
Anisotropic etching techniques (such as deep reactive ion etching) are used in
microfabrication processes to create well defined microscopic features with a high
aspect ratio. These features are commonly used in MEMS and microfluidic devices,
where the anisotropy of the features is needed to impart desired optical,
electrical, or physical properties to the device. Anisotropic etching can also
refer to certain chemical etchants used to etch a certain material preferentially
over certain crystallographic planes (e.g., KOH etching of silicon [100] produces
pyramid-like structures)

Neuroscience
Diffusion tensor imaging is an MRI technique that involves measuring the fractional
anisotropy of the random motion (Brownian motion) of water molecules in the brain.
Water molecules located in fiber tracts are more likely to be anisotropic, since
they are restricted in their movement (they move more in the dimension parallel to
the fiber tract rather than in the two dimensions orthogonal to it), whereas water
molecules dispersed in the rest of the brain have less restricted movement and
therefore display more isotropy. This difference in fractional anisotropy is
exploited to create a map of the fiber tracts in the brains of the individual.

Atmospheric radiative transfer

Radiance fields (see BRDF) from a reflective surface are often not isotropic in
nature. This makes calculations of the total energy being reflected from any scene
a difficult quantity to calculate. In remote sensing applications, anisotropy
functions can be derived for specific scenes, immensely simplifying the calculation
of the net reflectance or (thereby) the net irradiance of a scene. For example, let
the BRDF be {\displaystyle \gamma (\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v})} \gamma (\Omega
_{i},\Omega _{v}) where 'i' denotes incident direction and 'v' denotes viewing
direction (as if from a satellite or other instrument). And let P be the Planar
Albedo, which represents the total reflectance from the scene.

{\displaystyle P(\Omega _{i})=\int _{\Omega _{v}}\gamma (\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v})

{\hat {n}}\cdot d{\hat {\Omega }}_{v}} {\displaystyle P(\Omega _{i})=\int _{\Omega
_{v}}\gamma (\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v}){\hat {n}}\cdot d{\hat {\Omega }}_{v}}
{\displaystyle A(\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v})={\frac {\gamma (\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v})}
{P(\Omega _{i})}}} A(\Omega _{i},\Omega _{v})={\frac {\gamma (\Omega _{i},\Omega
_{v})}{P(\Omega _{i})}}
It is of interest because, with knowledge of the anisotropy function as defined, a
measurement of the BRDF from a single viewing direction (say, {\displaystyle \Omega
_{v}} \Omega _{v}) yields a measure of the total scene reflectance (Planar Albedo)
for that specific incident geometry (say, {\displaystyle \Omega _{i}} \Omega _{i}).

See also
Circular symmetry
References
Smoot G. F.; Gorenstein M. V. & Muller R. A. (5 October 1977). "Detection of
Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation" (PDF). Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
and Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 15
September 2013.
Tian, Xiaojuan; Itkis, Mikhail E; Bekyarova, Elena B; Haddon, Robert C (8 April
2013). "Anisotropic Thermal and Electrical Properties of Thin Thermal Interface
Layers of Graphite Nanoplatelet-Based Composites". Nature.com. Archived from the
original on 11 August 2016. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
R.J.Oosterbaan, 1997, The energy balance of groundwater flow applied to subsurface
drainage in anisotropic soils by pipes or ditches with entrance resistance. On
line: [1]. The corresponding free EnDrain program can be downloaded from: [2].
R.J.Oosterbaan, 2002, Subsurface drainage by (tube)wells, 9 pp. On line: [3]. The
corresponding free WellDrain program can be downloaded from: [4]
Kocks, U.F. (2000). Texture and Anisotropy: Preferred Orientations in Polycrystals
and their effect on Materials Properties. Cambridge. ISBN 9780521794206.
Sokolowski, Damian; Kaminski, Marcin (2018). "Homogenization of carbon/polymer
composites with anisotropic distribution of particles and stochastic interface
defects". Acta Mechanica. 229 (9): 3727�3765. doi:10.1007/s00707-018-2174-7.
Retrieved 21 August 2018.
Truesdell, Clifford; Noll, Walter. The Non-Linear Field Theories of Mechanics -
Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-10388-3.
External links
Look up anisotropy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
"Gauge, and knitted fabric generally, is an anisotropic phenomenon"
"Overview of Anisotropy"
DoITPoMS Teaching and Learning Package: "Introduction to Anisotropy"
Authority control Edit this at Wikidata
GND: 4002073-3
Categories: Orientation (geometry)
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