arXiv subjects

Gennady El

Publications and source records attributed to Gennady El.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Kinetic equations for a two-dimensional soliton gas

We formulate a general system of kinetic equations for a non-stationary two-dimensional gas of elastically interacting line solitons and apply it to the description of a soliton gas governed by the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili II (KPII) equation. We then verify the predictions of the kinetic theory in two analytically tractable problems: the oblique interaction of a KPII line soliton with a one-dimensional soliton condensate of the Korteweg-de Vries equation, and the interaction of a trial KPII soliton with a monochromatic KPII soliton gas. In both cases, we compare the analytical results with direct numerical simulations obtained by constructing two-dimensional soliton gases via exact KPII $N$-soliton solutions for large $N$, using appropriately chosen random distributions of soliton parameters. The comparison demonstrates excellent agreement, thereby providing strong validation of the proposed kinetic theory of 2D non-equilibrium soliton gases.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2025

Experimental observation of the spatio-temporal dynamics of breather gases in a recirculating fiber loop

We report the first experimental observation of breather gases (BGs) in optics, realized in a recirculating fiber loop enabling virtually lossless propagation over $1200$ km. Initiated by a slowly modulated optical background perturbed by noise, the BGs form through a nonlinear fission process and demonstrate spatiotemporal dynamics that align closely with numerical simulations of the focusing one-dimensional nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. The minimal dissipation in our setup enables a statistical characterization of the BGs and confirms the theoretically predicted doubling of kurtosis during the evolution of the BGs. These results open new avenues for experimental studies of integrable turbulence involving solitons on finite background.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2025

Solitary wave-mean flow interaction in strongly nonlineardispersive shallow water waves

The interaction of a solitary wave and a slowly varying mean background or flow for the Serre-Green-Naghdi (SGN) equations is studied using Whitham modulation theory. The exact form of the three SGN-Whitham modulation equations -- two for the mean horizontal velocity and depth decoupled from one for the solitary wave amplitude field -- are obtained exactly in the solitary wave limit. Although the three equations are not diagonalizable, the restriction of the full system to simple waves for the mean equations is diagonalized in terms of Riemann invariants. The Riemann invariants are used to analytically describe the head-on and overtaking interactions of a solitary wave with a rarefaction wave and dispersive shock wave (DSW), leading to scenarios of solitary wave trapping or transmission by the mean flow. The analytical results for overtaking interactions prove that a simpler, approximate approach based on the DSW fitting method is accurate to the second order in solitary wave amplitude, beyond the first order accurate Korteweg-de Vries approximation. The analytical results also accurately predict the SGN DSW's solitary wave edge amplitude and speed. The analytical results are favourably compared with corresponding numerical solutions of the full SGN equations. Because the SGN equations model the bi-directional propagation of strongly nonlinear, long gravity waves over a flat bottom, the analysis presented here describes large amplitude solitary wave-mean flow interactions in shallow water waves.

math-ph↗

arXiv2024

Dissipation-driven emergence of a soliton condensate in a nonlinear electrical transmission line

We present an experimental study on the perturbed evolution of Korteweg-deVries soliton gases in a weakly dissipative nonlinear electrical transmission line. The system's dynamics reveal that an initially dense, fully randomized, soliton gas evolves into a coherent macroscopic state identified as a soliton condensate through nonlinear spectral analysis. The emergence of the soliton condensate is driven by the spatial rearrangement of the systems's eigenmodes and by the proliferation of new solitonic states due to nonadiabatic effects, a phenomenon not accounted for by the existing hydrodynamic theories.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2023

Interaction of soliton gases in deep-water surface gravity waves

Soliton gases represent large random soliton ensembles in physical systems that display integrable dynamics at the leading order. We report hydrodynamic experiments in which we investigate the interaction between two "beams" or "jets" of soliton gases having nearly identical amplitudes but opposite velocities of the same magnitude. The space-time evolution of the two interacting soliton gas jets is recorded in a 140-m long water tank where the dynamics is described at leading order by the focusing one-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Varying the relative initial velocity of the two species of soliton gas, we change their interaction strength and we measure the macroscopic soliton gas density and velocity changes due to the interaction. Our experimental results are found to be in good quantitative agreement with predictions of the spectral kinetic theory of soliton gas despite the presence of perturbative higher-order effects that break the integrability of the wave dynamics.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2023

Soliton Gas: Theory, Numerics and Experiments

The concept of soliton gas was introduced in 1971 by V. Zakharov as an infinite collection of weakly interacting solitons in the framework of Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. In this theoretical construction of a diluted soliton gas, solitons with random parameters are almost non-overlapping. More recently, the concept has been extended to dense gases in which solitons strongly and continuously interact. The notion of soliton gas is inherently associated with integrable wave systems described by nonlinear partial differential equations like the KdV equation or the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation that can be solved using the inverse scattering transform. Over the last few years, the field of soliton gases has received a rapidly growing interest from both the theoretical and experimental points of view. In particular, it has been realized that the soliton gas dynamics underlies some fundamental nonlinear wave phenomena such as spontaneous modulation instability and the formation of rogue waves. The recently discovered deep connections of soliton gas theory with generalized hydrodynamics have broadened the field and opened new fundamental questions related to the soliton gas statistics and thermodynamics. We review the main recent theoretical and experimental results in the field of soliton gas. The key conceptual tools of the field, such as the inverse scattering transform, the thermodynamic limit of finite-gap potentials and the Generalized Gibbs Ensembles are introduced and various open questions and future challenges are discussed.

nlin.SI↗

arXiv2023

Soliton refraction through an optical soliton gas

We report an optical fiber experiment in which we investigate the interaction between an individual soliton and a dense soliton gas. We evidence a refraction phenomenon where the tracer soliton experiences an effective velocity change due to its interaction with the optical soliton gas. This interaction results in a significant spatial shift that is measured and compared with theoretical predictions obtained via the inverse scattering transform (IST) theory. The effective velocity change associated with the refraction phenomenon is found to be in good quantitative agreement with the results of the spectral kinetic theory of soliton gas. Our results validate the collision rate ansatz that plays a fundamental role in the kinetic theory of soliton gas and also is at heart of generalized hydrodynamics of many-body integrable systems.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2021

Prediction and manipulation of hydrodynamic rogue waves via nonlinear spectral engineering

Peregrine soliton (PS) is widely regarded as a prototype nonlinear structure capturing properties of rogue waves that emerge in the nonlinear propagation of unidirectional wave trains. As an exact breather solution of the one-dimensional focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nonzero boundary conditions, the PS can be viewed as a soliton on finite background, i.e. a nonlinear superposition of a soliton and a monochromatic wave. A recent mathematical work showed that both nonzero boundary conditions and solitonic content are not pre-requisites for the PS occurrence. Instead, it has been demonstrated that PS can emerge locally, as an asymptotic structure arising from the propagation of an arbitrary large decaying pulse, independently of its solitonic content. This mathematical discovery has changed the widely accepted paradigm of the solitonic nature of rogue waves by enabling the PS to emerge from a partially radiative or even completely solitonless initial data. In this work, we realize the mathematically predicted universal mechanism of the local PS emergence in a water tank experiment with a particular aim to control the point of the PS occurrence in space-time by imposing an appropriately chosen initial chirp. By employing the inverse scattering transform for the synthesis of the initial data, we are able to engineer a localized wave packet with a prescribed solitonic and radiative content. This enabled us to control the position of the emergence of the rogue wave by adjusting the inverse scattering spectrum. The proposed method of the nonlinear spectral engineering is found to be robust to higher-order nonlinear effects inevitable in realistic wave propagation conditions.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2021

Soliton gas in bidirectional dispersive hydrodynamics

The theory of soliton gas had been previously developed for unidirectional integrable dispersive hydrodynamics in which the soliton gas properties are determined by the overtaking elastic pairwise interactions between solitons. In this paper, we extend this theory to soliton gases in bidirectional integrable Eulerian systems where both head-on and overtaking collisions of solitons take place. We distinguish between two qualitatively different types of bidirectional soliton gases: isotropic gases, in which the position shifts accompanying the head-on and overtaking soliton collisions have the same sign, and anisotropic gases, in which the position shifts for head-on and overtaking collisions have opposite signs. We construct kinetic equations for both types of bidirectional soliton gases and solve the respective shock-tube problems for the collision of two "monochromatic" soliton beams consisting of solitons of approximately the same amplitude and velocity. The corresponding weak solutions of the kinetic equations consisting of differing uniform states separated by contact discontinuities for the mean flow are constructed. Concrete examples of bidirectional Eulerian soliton gases for the defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation and the resonant NLS equation are considered. The kinetic equation of the resonant NLS soliton gas is shown to be equivalent to that of the shallow-water bidirectional soliton gas described by the Kaup-Boussinesq equations. The analytical results for shock-tube Riemann problems for bidirectional soliton gases are shown to be in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2021

Numerical spectral synthesis of breather gas for the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation

We numerically realize breather gas for the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. This is done by building a random ensemble of N $\sim$ 50 breathers via the Darboux transform recursive scheme in high precision arithmetics. Three types of breather gases are synthesized according to the three prototypical spectral configurations corresponding the Akhmediev, Kuznetsov-Ma and Peregrine breathers as elementary quasi-particles of the respective gases. The interaction properties of the constructed breather gases are investigated by propagating through them a "trial" generic breather (Tajiri-Watanabe) and comparing the mean propagation velocity with the predictions of the recently developed spectral kinetic theory (El and Tovbis, PRE 2020).

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2020

Nonlinear spectral synthesis of soliton gas in deep-water surface gravity waves

Soliton gases represent large random soliton ensembles in physical systems that display integrable dynamics at the leading order. Despite significant theoretical developments and observational evidence of ubiquity of soliton gases in fluids and optical media their controlled experimental realization has been missing. We report the first controlled synthesis of a dense soliton gas in deep-water surface gravity waves using the tools of nonlinear spectral theory (inverse scattering transform (IST)) for the one-dional focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The soliton gas is experimentally generated in a one-dimensional water tank where we demonstrate that we can control and measure the density of states, i. e. the probability density function parametrizing the soliton gas in the IST spectral phase space. Nonlinear spectral analysis of the generated hydrodynamic soliton gas reveals that the density of states slowly changes under the influence of perturbative higher-order effects that break the integrability of the wave dynamics.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2020

Spectral theory of soliton and breather gases for the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Solitons and breathers are localized solutions of integrable systems that can be viewed as "particles'' of complex statistical objects called soliton and breather gases. In view of the growing evidence of their ubiquity in fluids and nonlinear optical media these "integrable'' gases present fundamental interest for nonlinear physics. We develop analytical theory of breather and soliton gases by considering a special, thermodynamic type limit of the wavenumber-frequency relations for multi-phase (finite-gap) solutions of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. This limit is defined by the locus and the critical scaling of the band spectrum of the associated Zakharov-Shabat operator and yields the nonlinear dispersion relations for a spatially homogeneous breather or soliton gas, depending on the presence or absence of the "background'' Stokes mode. The key quantity of interest is the density of states defining, in principle, all spectral and statistical properties of a soliton (breather) gas. The balance of terms in the nonlinear dispersion relations determines the nature of the gas: from an ideal gas of well separated, non-interacting breathers (solitons) to a special limiting state, which we term breather (soliton) condensate, and whose properties are entirely determined by the pairwise interactions between breathes (solitons). For a non-homogeneous breather gas, we derive a full set of kinetic equations describing slow evolution of the density of states and of its carrier wave counterpart. The kinetic equation for soliton gas is recovered by collapsing the Stokes spectral band. A number of concrete examples of breather and soliton gases are considered, demonstrating efficacy of the developed general theory with broad implications for nonlinear optics, superfluids and oceanography.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2020

From modulational instability to focusing dam breaks in water waves

We report water wave experiments performed in a long tank where we consider the evolution of nonlinear deep-water surface gravity waves with the envelope in the form of a large-scale rectangular barrier. Our experiments reveal that, for a range of initial parameters, the nonlinear wave packet is not disintegrated by the Benjamin-Feir instability but exhibits a specific, strongly nonlinear modulation, which propagates from the edges of the wavepacket towards the center with finite speed. Using numerical tools of nonlinear spectral analysis of experimental data we identify the observed envelope wave structures with focusing dispersive dam break flows, a peculiar type of dispersive shock waves recently described in the framework of the semi-classical limit of the 1D focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation (1D-NLSE). Our experimental results are shown to be in a good quantitative agreement with the predictions of the semi-classical 1D-NLSE theory. This is the first observation of the persisting dispersive shock wave dynamics in a modulationally unstable water wave system.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2019

Bound state soliton gas dynamics underlying the noise-induced modulational instability

We investigate theoretically the fundamental phenomenon of the spontaneous, noise-induced modulational instability (MI) of a plane wave. The long-term statistical properties of the noise-induced MI have been previously observed in experiments and in simulations but have not been explained so far. In the framework of inverse scattering transform (IST), we propose a model of the asymptotic stage of the noise-induced MI based on $N$-soliton solutions ($N$-SS) of the integrable focusing one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation (1D-NLSE). These $N$-SS are bound states of strongly interacting solitons having a specific distribution of the IST eigenvalues together with random phases. We use a special approach to construct ensembles of multi-soliton solutions with statistically large number of solitons $N\sim100$. Our investigation demonstrates complete agreement in spectral (Fourier) and statistical properties between the long-term evolution of the condensate perturbed by noise and the constructed multi-soliton bound states. Our results can be generalised to a broad class of integrable turbulence problems in the cases when the wave field dynamics is strongly nonlinear and driven by solitons.

nlin.SI↗

arXiv2019

Early stage of integrable turbulence in 1D NLS equation: the semi-classical approach to statistics

We examine statistical properties of integrable turbulence in the defocusing and focusing regimes of one-dimensional small-dispersion nonlinear Schrodinger equation (1D-NLSE). Specifically, we study the 1D-NLSE evolution of partially coherent waves having Gaussian statistics at time t=0. Using short time asymptotic expansions and taking advantage of the scale separation in the semi-classical regime we obtain a simple explicit formula describing an early stage of the evolution of the fourth moment of the random wave field amplitude, a quantitative measure of the "tailedness" of the probability density function. Our results show excellent agreement with numerical simulations of the full 1D-NLSE random field dynamics and provide insight into the emergence of the well-known phenomenon of heavy (resp. low) tails of the statistical distribution emerging in the focusing (resp. defocusing) regime of 1D-NLSE.

nlin.SI↗

arXiv2018

Nonlinear spectral analysis of Peregrine solitons observed in optics and in hydrodynamic experiments

The data recorded in optical fiber [1] and in hydrodynamic [2] experiments reported the pioneering observation of nonlinear waves with spatiotemporal localization similar to the Peregrine soliton are examined by using nonlinear spectral analysis. Our approach is based on the integrable nature of the one-dimensional focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation (1D-NLSE) that governs at leading order the propagation of the optical and hydrodynamic waves in the two experiments. Nonlinear spectral analysis provides certain spectral portraits of the analyzed structures that are composed of bands lying in the complex plane. The spectral portraits can be interpreted within the framework of the so-called finite gap theory (or periodic inverse scattering transform). In particular, the number N of bands composing the nonlinear spectrum determines the genus g = N - 1 of the solution that can be viewed as a measure of complexity of the space-time evolution of the considered solution. Within this setting the ideal, rational Peregrine soliton represents a special, degenerate genus 2 solution. While the fitting procedures employed in [1] and [2] show that the experimentally observed structures are quite well approximated by the Peregrine solitons, nonlinear spectral analysis of the breathers observed both in the optical fiber and in the water tank experiments reveals that they exhibit spectral portraits associated with more general, genus 4 finite-gap NLSE solutions. Moreover, the nonlinear spectral analysis shows that the nonlinear spectrum of the breathers observed in the experiments slowly changes with the propagation distance, thus confirming the influence of unavoidable perturbative higher order effects or dissipation in the experiments.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2018

Universal nonlinear stage of the locally induced modulational instability in fiber optics

We report an optical fiber experiment in which we study nonlinear stage of modulational instability of a plane wave in the presence of a localized perturbation. Using a recirculating fiber loop as experimental platform, we show that the initial perturbation evolves into expanding nonlinear oscillatory structure exhibiting some universal characteristics that agree with theoretical predictions based on integrability properties of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Our experimental results demonstrate persistence of the universal evolution scenario, even in the presence of small dissipation and noise in an experimental system that is not rigorously of an integrable nature.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2017

Optical Random Riemann Waves in Integrable Turbulence

We examine integrable turbulence (IT) in the framework of the defocusing cubic one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation. This is done theoretically and experimentally, by realizing an optical fiber experiment in which the defocusing Kerr nonlinearity strongly dominates linear dispersive effects. Using a dispersive-hydrodynamic approach, we show that the development of IT can be divided into two distinct stages, the initial, pre-breaking stage being described by a system of interacting random Riemann waves. We explain the low-tailed statistics of the wave intensity in IT and show that the Riemann invariants of the asymptotic nonlinear geometric optics system represent the observable quantities that provide new insight into statistical features of the initial stage of the IT development by exhibiting stationary probability density functions.

nlin.PS↗