Weakly divergent ray and diffraction beams in oceanic waveguides

Conditions that should be satisfied by the sound velocity profile of an oceanic waveguide for the dependence of the ray cycle length on the ray phase velocity to contain smooth extrema are formulated. The extrema correspond to weakly divergent ray beams forming “caustic” beams. It is found that diffraction effects cause a considerable smoothing of the sharp extrema that occur in the dependence of the interference period of neighboring modes on their phase velocity. As a result, in addition to the weakly divergent ray beams, weakly divergent diffraction beams and the corresponding “diffraction” caustics can be formed.