Exact Solitary Water Waves with Vorticity

The solitary water wave problem is to find steady free surface waves which approach a constant level of depth in the far field. The main result is the existence of a family of exact solitary waves of small amplitude for an arbitrary vorticity. Each solution has a supercritical parameter value and decays exponentially at infinity. The proof is based on a generalized implicit function theorem of the Nash–Moser type. The first approximation to the surface profile is given by the “KdV” equation. With a supercritical value of the surface tension coefficient, a family of small amplitude solitary waves of depression with subcritical parameter values is constructed for an arbitrary vorticity.