Explosive Instability due to four-wave mixing

It is known that an explosive instability can occur when nonlinear waves propagate in certain media that admit 3-wave mixing. The purpose of this Letter is to show that explosive instabilities can occur even in media that admit no 3-wave mixing. Instead, the instability is caused by 4-wave mixing: four resonantly interacting wave trains gain energy from a background, and all blowup in a finite time. Unlike singularities associated with self-focussing, these singularities can occur with no spatial structure-the waves blowup everywhere in space simultaneously. We have not yet investigated the effect of spatial structure on a 4-wave explosive instability.     

Electron distribution functions in a heterogeneous medium

Our purpose is to prove that the electron distribution function near a cathode in a weakly ionized heterogeneous medium has a “band structure” which disappears far from the cathode when an equilibrium state is attained.     

An Analytical Model of Periodic Waves in Shallow Water

An explicit, analytical model is presented of finite-amplitude waves in shallow water. The waves in question have two independent spatial periods, in two independent horizontal directions. Both short-crested and long-crested waves are available from the model. Every wave pattern is an exact solution of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation, and is based on a Riemann theta function of genus 2. These biperiodic waves are direct generalizations of the well-known (simply periodic) cnoidal waves. Just as cnoidal waves are often used as one-dimensional models of “typical” nonlinear, periodic waves in shallow water, these biperiodic waves may be considered to represent “typical” nonlinear, periodic waves in shallow water without the assumption of one-dimensionality.