Extreme wave phenomena in down-stream running modulated waves

Modulational, Benjamin-Feir, instability is studied for the down-stream evolution of surface gravity waves. An explicit solution, the soliton on finite background, of the NLS equation in physical space is used to study various phenomena in detail. It is shown that for sufficiently long modulation lengths, at a unique position where the largest waves appear, phase singularities are present in the time signal. These singularities are related to wave dislocations and lead to a discrimination between successive ‘extreme’ waves and much smaller intermittent waves. Energy flow in opposite directions through successive dislocations at which waves merge and split, causes the large amplitude difference. The envelope of the time signal at that point is shown to have a simple phase plane representation, and will be described by a symmetry breaking unfolding of the steady state solutions of NLS. The results are used together with the maximal temporal amplitude MTA, to design a strategy for the generation of extreme (freak, rogue) waves in hydrodynamic laboratories.     

Linear water waves with vorticity: Rotational features and particle paths

We study steady linear gravity waves of small amplitude travelling on a current of constant vorticity. For positive vorticity the situation resembles that of Stokes waves, but if the vorticity is large enough the particle trajectories are affected. For negative vorticity we show that there may appear internal waves and vortices, wherein the particle trajectories are not ellipses.     

Nonlinear stability of viscous shock waves for one-dimensional nonisentropic compressible Navier–Stokes equations with a class of large initial perturbation

We study the nonlinear stability of viscous shock waves for the Cauchy problem of one-dimensional nonisentropic compressible Navier–Stokes equations for a viscous and heat conducting ideal polytropic gas. The viscous shock waves are shown to be time asymptotically stable under large initial perturbation with no restriction on the range of the adiabatic exponent provided that the strengths of the viscous shock waves are assumed to be sufficiently small. The proofs are based on the nonlinear energy estimates and the crucial step is to obtain the positive lower and upper bounds of the density and the temperature which are uniformly in time and space.     

Two-dimensional travelling waves over a moving bottom

Two-dimensional travelling waves on an ideal fluid with gravity and surface tension over a periodically moving bottom with a small amplitude are studied. The bottom and the wave travel with a same speed. The exact Euler equations are formulated as a spatial dynamic system by using the stream function. A manifold reduction technique is applied to reduce the system into one of ordinary differential equations with finite dimensions. A homoclinic solution to the normal form of this reduced system persists when higher-order terms are added, which gives a generalized solitary wave—the homoclinic solution connecting a periodic solution.     

Small amplitude steady internal waves in stratified fluids

We study the weakly non linear solutions of theDubreil-Jacotin—Long elliptic equation in a strip, which describes two dimensional gravity internal waves propagating steadily in a stratified fluid. In the neighborhood of the first critical value of the Froude number, the center manifold theorem ensures that small solutions are parametrized by two coordinates which verify a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. We compute numerically the coefficients of the normal form of this reduced system for a three parameters family of stratifications and show that the quadratic coefficient (the most important) may become small. In that case, nonusual waves such as fronts can propagate. The last part of our work studies the case when a smooth stratification converges towards a piecewise constant profile having one discontinuity. We observe formally that the small waves which propagate at the interface of two homogeneous fluids are limits at leading order of waves travelling in the region where the smooth density varies rapidly.     

Mathematical modelization of equatorial waves

Our purpose is to calculate waves propagating along the equator in an oceanic domain and the influence of a characteristic mean equatorial circulation on the nature of these waves. Equations satisfied by perturbations of currents and temperature are of the Navier-Stokes type and have been linearized around a stationary solution. Existence and uniqueness of the solution have been proved. Numerical experiments have been carried out and provided us with time-dependent values. The excited waves are exhibited by Fourier analysis of these time series.     

Asymptotic stability of nonlinear wave for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the half space

In the present paper, we investigate the large-time behavior of the solution to an initial-boundary value problem for the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the Eulerian coordinate in the half space. This is one of the series of papers by the authors on the stability of nonlinear waves for the outflow problem of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Some suitable assumptions are made to guarantee that the time-asymptotic state is a nonlinear wave which is the superposition of a stationary solution and a rarefaction wave. Employing the L²-energy method and making use of the techniques from the paper [S. Kawashima, Y. Nikkuni, Stability of rarefaction waves for the discrete Boltzmann equations, Adv. Math. Sci. Appl. 12 (1) (2002) 327-353], we prove that this nonlinear wave is nonlinearly stable under a small perturbation. The complexity of nonlinear wave leads to many complicated terms in the course of establishing the a priori estimates, however those terms are of two basic types, and the terms of each type are “good” and can be evaluated suitably by using the decay (in both time and space variables) estimates of each component of nonlinear wave.     

Existence and continuous dependence of large solutions for the magnetohydrodynamic equations

Global solutions of the nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations with general large initial data are investigated. First the existence and uniqueness of global solutions are established with large initial data in H ¹. It is shown that neither shock waves nor vacuum and concentration are developed in a finite time, although there is a complex interaction between the hydrodynamic and magnetodynamic effects. Then the continuous dependence of solutions upon the initial data is proved. The equivalence between the well-posedness problems of the system in Euler and Lagrangian coordinates is also showed.     

On the Boussinesq/Full dispersion systems and Boussinesq/Boussinesq systems for internal waves

In this paper, we consider some asymptotic models for internal waves in the small amplitude/small amplitude regime, which were derived recently by Bona, Lannes and Saut. We first prove that the Boussinesq/Full dispersion systems and the Boussinesq/Boussinesq systems can be derived from the Full dispersion/Full dispersion systems. Then using a contraction-mapping argument and the energy method, we will prove that the derived systems that are linearly well-posed are in fact locally nonlinearly well-posed in suitable Sobolev classes. In particular, we improve and extend some known results on the well-posedness of Boussinesq systems for surface waves.     

Water waves over a rough bottom in the shallow water regime

This is a study of the Euler equations for free surface water waves in the case of varying bathymetry, considering the problem in the shallow water scaling regime. In the case of rapidly varying periodic bottom boundaries this is a problem of homogenization theory. In this setting we derive a new model system of equations, consisting of the classical shallow water equations coupled with nonlocal evolution equations for a periodic corrector term. We also exhibit a new resonance phenomenon between surface waves and a periodic bottom. This resonance, which gives rise to secular growth of surface wave patterns, can be viewed as a nonlinear generalization of the classical Bragg resonance. We justify the derivation of our model with a rigorous mathematical analysis of the scaling limit and the resulting error terms. The principal issue is that the shallow water limit and the homogenization process must be performed simultaneously. Our model equations and the error analysis are valid for both the two- and the three-dimensional physical problems.     

Global well-posedness for the 2D Boussinesq system with anisotropic viscosity and without heat diffusion

We establish global existence and uniqueness theorems for the two-dimensional non-diffusive Boussinesq system with anisotropic viscosity acting only in the horizontal direction, which arises in ocean dynamics models. Global well-posedness for this system was proven by Danchin and Paicu; however, an additional smoothness assumption on the initial density was needed to prove uniqueness. They stated that it is not clear whether uniqueness holds without this additional assumption. The present work resolves this question and we establish uniqueness without this additional assumption. Furthermore, the proof provided here is more elementary; we use only tools available in the standard theory of Sobolev spaces, and without resorting to para-product calculus. We use a new approach by defining an auxiliary “stream-function” associated with the density, analogous to the stream-function associated with the vorticity in 2D incompressible Euler equations, then we adapt some of the ideas of Yudovich for proving uniqueness for 2D Euler equations.     

Coherent Reflection of Electromagnetic Plane Waves from Infinite Rough Slabs

We adopt the prospect of an observer interested to optimise the signal-to-noise ratio in the reception of the backward radiation coming from a surface illuminated by an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength chosen to minimize the diffuse scattering so that he has just to point his receiver in the direction of the coherent reflection. Then, to analyse the coherent reflection for harmonic plane waves impinging on a dielectric infinite film deposited on a metallic substrate we develop a formalism generalizing the customary angular spectrum representation used to tackle this kind of problem. This new approach whose efficiency is proved in the easier situation of a dielectric film endowed with an impedance, is used to get the coherent reflection from a structured 1D-dielectric film illuminated by TE and TM electromagnetic plane waves when the rough amplitude h is small enough to justify 0(h ²) approximations. The Idemen technique is used to get the boundary conditions needed to tackle these scattering problems.     

Lie-group theoretic method for analyzing interaction of discontinuous waves in a relaxing gas

A Lie group of transformations method is used to establish self-similar solutions to the problem of shock wave propagation through a relaxing gas and its interaction with the weak discontinuity wave. The forms of the equilibrium value of the vibrational energy and the relaxation time, varying with the density and pressure are determined for which the system admits self-similar solutions. A particular solution to the problem has been found out and used to study the effects of specific heat ratio and ambient density exponent on the flow parameters. The coefficients of amplitudes of reflected and transmitted waves after the interaction are determined.     

Sharp decay estimates for hyperbolic balance laws

We consider strictly hyperbolic and genuinely nonlinear systems of hyperbolic balance laws in one-space dimension. Sharp decay estimates are derived for the positive waves in an entropy weak solution. The result is obtained by introducing a partial ordering within the family of positive Radon measures, using symmetric rearrangements and a comparison with a solution of Burgers's equation with impulsive sources as well as lower semicontinuity properties of continuous Glimm-type functionals.     

Behaviour of weak solutions of compressible Navier-Stokes equations for isothermal fluids with a nonlinear stress tensor

The aim of this paper is to study the behaviour of a weak solution to Navier-Stokes equations for isothermal fluids with a nonlinear stress tensor for time going to infinity. In an analogous way as in [18], we construct a suitable function which approximates the density for time going to infinity. Using properties of this function, we can prove the strong convergence of the density to its limit state. The behaviour of the velocity field and kinetic energy is mentioned as well.     

Benjamin–Ono periodic bifurcating water waves in presence of an essential spectrum

The mathematical study of travelling waves in the potential flow of two superposed layers of perfect fluid can be set as an ill-posed evolutionary problem, in which the horizontal unbounded space variable plays the role of “time”. In this paper we consider two problems for which the bottom layer of fluid is infinitely deep: for the first problem, the upper layer is bounded by a rigid top and there is no surface tension at the interface; for the second problem, there is a free surface with a large enough surface tension. In both problems, the linearized operator Lε$L_{\epsilon }$ (where ε is a combination of the physical parameters) around 0 possesses an essential spectrum filling the entire real line  , with in addition a simple eigenvalue in 0. Moreover, for ε<0$\epsilon <0$, there is a pair of imaginary eigenvalues which meet in 0 when ε=0$\epsilon =0$ and which disappear in the essential spectrum for ε>0$\epsilon >0$. For ε>0$\epsilon >0$ small enough, we prove in this paper the existence of a two parameter family of periodic travelling waves (corresponding to periodic solutions of the dynamical system). These solutions are obtained in showing that the full system can be seen as a perturbation of the Benjamin–Ono equation. The periods of these solutions run on an interval (T₀,∞)$(T_0,\infty )$ possibly except a discrete set of isolated points.     

Global entropy solutions to the relativistic Euler equations for a class of large initial data

We are concerned with global entropy solutions to the relativistic Euler equations for a class of large initial data which involve the interaction of shock waves and rarefaction waves. We first carefully analyze the global behavior of the shock curves, the rarefaction wave curves, and their corresponding inverse curves in the phase plane. Based on these analyses, we use the Glimm scheme to construct global entropy solutions to the relativistic Euler equations for the class of large discontinuous initial data.Received: May 23, 2004     

(2+1)-dimensional Broer–Kaup system of shallow water waves and similarity solutions with symbolic computation

The Broer–Kaup system is among the important integrable models for the shallow water waves. For a (2+1)-dimensional Broer–Kaup system and with symbolic computation, we present some similarity solutions, which are expressible in terms of the Jacobian elliptic functions and second Painlevé transcendent. Our results are in agreement with the Painlevé conjecture.Received: February 26, 2003; revised: August 11, 2003     

Global existence of shock front solution to axially symmetric piston problem in compressible flow

In this paper we study the global existence of BV solution to two-dimensional piston problem in fluid dynamics. Different from previous results on related problems we remove the restriction on the strength of the leading shock and require the velocity of the piston is rather fast or the density is quite small instead. The main tool in our proof is Glimm Scheme with some improvement. To define the Glimm functional we derive more precise estimates for the interaction of elementary waves, particularly in the region near the leading shock. The paper is partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China 10531020, the National Basic Research Program of China 2006CB805902 and the Doctorial Foundation of National Educational Ministry 20050246001.     

Capillary waves with variable surface tension

The classical problem of capillary waves propagating at a constant velocity at the surface of a fluid of infinite depth is reexamined. The surface tension is assumed to vary along the free surface. The problem is solved numerically by series truncation. It is shown that the properties of the waves are qualitatively similar to those of waves with constant surface tension and that there are nonsymmetric waves with variable surface tension.