arXiv · 1411.2475
A dimension-breaking phenomenon for water waves with weak surface tension
Abstract
It is well known that the water-wave problem with weak surface tension has small-amplitude line solitary-wave solutions which to leading order are described by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The present paper contains an existence theory for three-dimensional periodically modulated solitary-wave solutions which have a solitary-wave profile in the direction of propagation and are periodic in the transverse direction; they emanate from the line solitary waves in a dimension-breaking bifurcation. In addition, it is shown that the line solitary waves are linearly unstable to long-wavelength transverse perturbations. The key to these results is a formulation of the water wave problem as an evolutionary system in which the transverse horizontal variable plays the role of time, a careful study of the purely imaginary spectrum of the operator obtained by linearising the evolutionary system at a line solitary wave, and an application of an infinite-dimensional version of the classical Lyapunov centre theorem.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Mark D. Groves, Shu-Ming Sun, Erik Wahlén. 2016-09-08. A dimension-breaking phenomenon for water waves with weak surface tension. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00205-015-0941-3
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.