This paper investigates the stability of traveling wave solutions to the free boundary Euler equations with a submerged point vortex. We prove that sufficiently small-amplitude waves with small enough vortex strength are conditionally orbitally stable. In the process of obtaining this result, we develop a quite general stability/instability theory for bound state solutions of a large class of infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems in the presence of symmetry. This is in the spirit of the seminal work of Grillakis, Shatah, and Strauss, but with hypotheses that are relaxed in a number of ways necessary for the point vortex system, and for other hydrodynamical applications more broadly. In particular, we are able to allow the Poisson map to have merely dense range, as opposed to being surjective, and to be state-dependent.
As a second application of the general theory, we consider a family of nonlinear dispersive PDEs that includes the generalized KdV and Benjamin--Ono equations. The stability/instability of solitary waves for these systems has been studied extensively, notably by Bona, Souganidis, and Strauss, who used a modification of the GSS method. We provide a new, more direct proof of these results that follows as a straightforward consequence of our abstract theory. At the same time, we extend them to fractional order dispersive equations.
Considered herein is the integrable two-component Camassa-Holm shallow water system derived in the context of shallow water theory, which admits blow-up solutions and the solitary waves interacting like solitons. Using modulation theory, and combining the almost monotonicity of a local version of energy with the argument on the stability of a single solitary wave, we prove that the train of $N$ solitary waves, which are sufficiently decoupled, is orbitally stable in the energy space $H^1(\R)\times L^2(\R)$.
We consider two-dimensional solitary water waves on a shear flow with an arbitrary distribution of vorticity. Assuming that the horizontal velocity in the fluid never exceeds the wave speed and that the free surface lies everywhere above its asymptotic level, we give a very simple proof that a suitably defined Froude number $F$ must be strictly greater than the critical value $F=1$. We also prove a related upper bound on $F$, and hence on the amplitude, under more restrictive assumptions on the vorticity.
This paper considers the existence and stability properties of two-dimensional solitary waves traversing an infinitely deep body of water. We assume that above the water is vacuum, and that the waves are acted upon by gravity with surface tension effects on the air--water interface. In particular, we study the case where there is a finite dipole in the bulk of the fluid, that is, the vorticity is a sum of two weighted $δ$-functions. Using an implicit function theorem argument, we construct a family of solitary waves solutions for this system that is exhaustive in a neighborhood of $0$. Our mai…
A fundamental question in the study of water waves is the existence and stability of solitary waves. Solitary waves have been proved to exist and have been studied in many interesting situations, and often arise from the balance of different forces/factors influencing the fluid dynamics, e.g. gravity, surface tension or the fluid bottom. However, the existence of solitary waves has remained an open problem in two of the simplest cases, namely for either pure gravity waves or pure capillary waves in infinite depth. In this article we settle both of these questions in two space dimensions. Preci…
We consider two- and three-dimensional gravity and gravity-capillary solitary water waves in infinite depth. Assuming algebraic decay rates for the free surface and velocity potential, we show that the velocity potential necessarily behaves like a dipole at infinity and obtain a related asymptotic formula for the free surface. We then prove an identity relating the "dipole moment" to the kinetic energy. This implies that the leading-order terms in the asymptotics are nonvanishing and in particular that the angular momentum is infinite. Lastly we prove a related integral identity which rules ou…
We prove that the 2D finite depth capillary water wave equations admit no solitary wave solutions. This closes the existence/non-existence problem for solitary water waves in 2D, under the classical assumptions of incompressibility and irrotationality, and with the physical parameters being gravity, surface tension and the fluid depth.
We present a large-amplitude existence theory for two-dimensional solitary waves propagating through a two layer body of water. The domain of the fluid is bounded below by an impermeable flat ocean floor and above by a free boundary at constant pressure. For any piecewise smooth upstream density distribution and laminar background current, we construct a global curve of solutions. This curve bifurcates from the background current and, following along the curve, we find waves that are arbitrarily close to having horizontal stagnation points. The small-amplitude waves are constructed using a cen…
This paper considers two-dimensional gravity solitary waves moving through a body of density stratified water lying below vacuum. The fluid domain is assumed to lie above an impenetrable flat ocean bed, while the interface between the water and vacuum is a free boundary where the pressure is constant. We prove that, for any smooth choice of upstream velocity field and density function, there exists a continuous curve of such solutions that includes large-amplitude surface waves. Furthermore, following this solution curve, one encounters waves that come arbitrarily close to possessing points of…
This paper considers two-dimensional steady solitary waves with constant vorticity propagating under the influence of gravity over an impermeable flat bed. Unlike in previous works on solitary waves, we allow for both internal stagnation points and overhanging wave profiles. Using analytic global bifurcation theory, we construct continuous curves of large-amplitude solutions. Along these curves, either the wave amplitude approaches the maximum possible value, the dimensionless wave speed becomes unbounded, or a singularity develops in a conformal map describing the fluid domain. We also show t…
We investigate the existence of solitary gravity waves traversing a two-dimensional body of water that is bounded below by a flat impenetrable ocean bed and above by a free surface of constant pressure. Our main interest is constructing waves of this form that exhibit a discontinuous distribution of vorticity. More precisely, this means that the velocity limits both upstream and downstream to a laminar flow that is merely Lipschitz continuous. We prove that, for any choice of background velocity with this regularity, there exists a global curve of solutions bifurcating from a critical laminar …
We study asymptotic stability of solitary wave solutions in the one-dimensional Benney-Luke equation, a formally valid approximation for describing two-way water wave propagation. For this equation, as for the full water wave problem, the classic variational method for proving orbital stability of solitary waves fails dramatically due to the fact that the second variation of the energy-momentum functional is infinitely indefinite. We establish nonlinear stability in energy norm under the spectral stability hypothesis that the linearization admits no non-zero eigenvalues of non-negative real pa…
The solitary wave problem at the free surface of a two-dimensional, infinitely-deep and irrotational flow of water, under the influence of gravity, is formulated as a nonlinear pseudodifferential equation. A Pohozaev identity is used to show that it admits no solutions which asymptotically vanish faster than linearly.
Fully localised solitary waves are travelling-wave solutions of the three-dimensional gravity-capillary water wave problem which decay to zero in every horizontal spatial direction. Their existence for water of finite depth has recently been established, and in this article we present an existence theory for water of infinite depth. The governing equations are reduced to a perturbation of the two-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which admits a family of localised solutions. Two of these solutions are symmetric in both horizontal directions and an application of a suitable version of…
In this paper, we study solitary waves propagating along the surface of an infinitely deep body of water in two or three dimensions. The waves are acted upon by gravity and capillary effects are allowed --- but not required --- on the interface. We assume that the vorticity is localized in the sense that it satisfies certain moment conditions, and we permit there to be finitely many point vortices in the bulk of the fluid in two dimensions. We also consider a two-fluid model with a vortex sheet. Under mild decay assumptions, we obtain precise asymptotics for the velocity field and free surface…
We construct small-amplitude solitary traveling gravity-capillary water waves with a finite number of point vortices along a vertical line, on finite depth. This is done using a local bifurcation argument. The properties of the resulting waves are also examined: We find that they depend significantly on the position of the point vortices in the water column.
We present an exact relation among the kinetic, potential and surface tension energies of a solitary wave in deep water in all dimensions. We deduce its non-existence in the absence of the effects of surface tension, provided that gravity acts in a direction opposite to what is physically realistic.
This work studies the rotation-generalized Benjamin-Ono equation which is derived from the theory of weakly nonlinear long surface and internal waves in deep water under the presence of rotation. It is shown that the solitary-wave solutions are orbitally stable for certain wave speeds.
Using a nonlocal version of the center manifold theorem and a normal form reduction, we prove the existence of small-amplitude generalized solitary-wave solutions and modulated solitary-wave solutions to the steady gravity-capillary Whitham equation with weak surface tension. Through the application of the center manifold theorem, the nonlocal equation for the solitary wave profiles is reduced to a four-dimensional system of ODEs inheriting reversibility. Along particular parameter curves, relating directly to the classical gravity-capillary water wave problem, the associated linear operator i…
We prove an asymptotic stability result for the water wave equations linearized around small solitary waves. The equations we consider govern irrotational flow of a fluid with constant density bounded below by a rigid horizontal bottom and above by a free surface under the influence of gravity neglecting surface tension. For sufficiently small amplitude waves, with waveform well-approximated by the well-known sech-squared shape of the KdV soliton, solutions of the linearized equations decay at an exponential rate in an energy norm with exponential weight translated with the wave profile. This …
We consider the linearized instability of 2D irrotational solitary water waves. The maxima of energy and the travel speed of solitary waves are not obtained at the highest wave, which has a 120 degree angle at the crest. Under the assumption of non-existence of secondary bifurcation which is confirmed numerically, we prove linear instability of solitary waves which are higher than the wave of maximal energy and lower than the wave of maximal travel speed. It is also shown that there exist unstable solitary waves approaching the highest wave. The unstable waves are of large amplitude and theref…
The aim of this work is to study solitary water wave interactions between two topographic obstacles for the forced Korteweg-de Vries equation (fKdV). Focusing on the details of the interactions, we identify regimes in which solitary wave interactions maintain two well separated crests and regimes where the number of local maxima varies according to the laws $2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2$ or $2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2$. It shows that the geometric Lax-categorization of Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) two-soliton interactions still holds for the fKdV equation.
In this paper we show that the hydrodynamic problem for three-dimensional water waves with strong surface-tension effects admits a fully localised solitary wave which decays to the undisturbed state of the water in every horizontal direction. The proof is based upon the classical variational principle that a solitary wave of this type is a critical point of the energy subject to the constraint that the momentum is fixed. We prove the existence of a minimiser of the energy subject to the constraint that the momentum is fixed and small. The existence of a small-amplitude solitary wave is thus as…
We present an existence and stability theory for gravity-capillary solitary waves with constant vorticity on the surface of a body of water of finite depth. Exploiting a rotational version of the classical variational principle, we prove the existence of a minimiser of the wave energy $\mathcal H$ subject to the constraint $\mathcal I=2μ$, where $\mathcal I$ is the wave momentum and $0< μ\ll 1$. Since $\mathcal H$ and $\mathcal I$ are both conserved quantities a standard argument asserts the stability of the set $D_μ$ of minimisers: solutions starting near $D_μ$ remain close to $D_μ$ in a suit…
We prove the nonexistence of two-dimensional solitary gravity water waves with subcritical wave speeds and an arbitrary distribution of vorticity. This is a longstanding open problem, and even in the irrotational case there are only partial results relying on sign conditions or smallness assumptions. As a corollary, we obtain a relatively complete classification of solitary waves: they must be supercritical, symmetric, and monotonically decreasing on either side of a central crest. The proof introduces a new function which is related to the so-called flow force and has several surprising prope…
The main result of this work is the construction of multi-solitons solutions that is to say solutions that are time asymptotics to a sum of decoupling solitary waves for the full water waves system with surface tension.
Some effects of surface tension on fully-nonlinear, long, surface water waves are studied by numerical means. The differences between various solitary waves and their interactions in subcritical and supercritical surface tension regimes are presented. Analytical expressions for new peaked travelling wave solutions are presented in the case of critical surface tension. The numerical experiments were performed using a high-accurate finite element method based on smooth cubic splines and the four-stage, classical, explicit Runge-Kutta method of order four.
Steady vortices for the three-dimensional Euler equation for inviscid incompressible flows and for the shallow water equation are constructed and showed to tend asymptotically to singular vortex filaments. The construction is based on the asymptotic study of solutions to a semilinear elliptic problem.
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 t…
Fully localised solitary waves are travelling-wave solutions of the three-dimensional gravity-capillary water wave problem which decay to zero in every horizontal spatial direction. Their existence has been predicted on the basis of numerical simulations and model equations (in which context they are usually referred to as `lumps'), and a mathematically rigorous existence theory for strong surface tension (Bond number $β$ greater than $\frac{1}{3}$) has recently been given. In this article we present an existence theory for the physically more realistic case $0<β<\frac{1}{3}$. A classical vari…
In this paper, we prove the existence of relative equilibria with holes for quasi-geostrophic shallow-water equations. More precisely, using bifurcation techniques, we establish for any m large enough the existence of two branches of m-fold doubly-connected V-states bifurcating from any annulus of arbitrary size.
We consider linear instability of solitary waves of several classes of dispersive long wave models. They include generalizations of KDV, BBM, regularized Boussinesq equations, with general dispersive operators and nonlinear terms. We obtain criteria for the existence of exponentially growing solutions to the linearized problem. The novelty is that we dealt with models with nonlocal dispersive terms, for which the spectra problem is out of reach by the Evans function technique. For the proof, we reduce the linearized problem to study a family of nonlocal operators, which are closely related to …
We address various issues concerning the Cauchy problem for the Zakharov-Rubenchik system (known as the Benney-Roskes system in water waves theory), which models the interaction of short and long waves in many physical situations. Motivated by the transverse stability/instability of the one-dimensional solitary wave (line solitary), we study the Cauchy problem in the background of a line solitary wave.
We study traveling wave solutions of an equation for surface waves of moderate amplitude arising as a shallow water approximation of the Euler equations for inviscid, incompressible and homogenous fluids. We obtain solitary waves of elevation and depression, including a family of solitary waves with compact support, where the amplitude may increase or decrease with respect to the wave speed. Our approach is based on techniques from dynamical systems and relies on a reformulation of the evolution equation as an autonomous Hamiltonian system which facilitates an explicit expression for bounded o…
We study the existence of traveling wave solutions to a unidirectional shallow water model which incorporates the full linear dispersion relation for both gravitational and capillary restoring forces. Using functional analytic techniques, we show that for small surface tension (corresponding to Bond numbers between $0$ and ${1}/{3}$) there exists small amplitude solitary waves that decay to asymptotically small periodic waves at spatial infinity. The size of the oscillations in the far field are shown to be small beyond all algebraic orders in the amplitude of the wave. We also present numeric…
The travelling wave problem for a particular bidirectional Whitham system modelling surface water waves is under consideration. This system firstly appeared in [Dinvay, Dutykh, Kalisch 2018], where it was numerically shown to be stable and a good approximation to the incompressible Euler equations. In subsequent papers [Dinvay 2018], [Dinvay, Selberg, Tesfahun 2019] the initial-value problem was studied and well-posedness in classical Sobolev spaces was proved. Here we prove existence of solitary wave solutions and provide their asymptotic description. Our proof relies on a variational approac…
In this paper, we prove the nonlinear orbital stability of vortex dipoles for the quasi-geostrophic shallow-water (QGSW) equations. The vortex dipoles are explicit travelling wave solutions to the QGSW equations, which are analogues of the classical circular vortex of Lamb and Chaplygin for the steady planar Euler equations. We establish a variational characterization of these vortex poles, which provides a basis for the stability result.
The Degasperis-Procesi equation is an approximating model of shallow-water wave propagating mainly in one direction to the Euler equations. Such a model equation is analogous to the Camassa-Holm approximation of the two-dimensional incompressible and irrotational Euler equations with the same asymptotic accuracy, and is integrable with the bi-Hamiltonian structure. In the present study, we establish existence and spectral stability results of localized smooth solitons to the Degasperis-Procesi equation on the real line. The stability proof relies essentially on refined spectral analysis of the…
We study by a combination of numerical and analytical Evans function techniques the stability of solitary wave solutions of the St. Venant equations for viscous shallow-water flow down an incline, and related models. Our main result is to exhibit examples of metastable solitary waves for the St. Venant equations, with stable point spectrum indicating coherence of the wave profile but unstable essential spectrum indicating oscillatory convective instabilities shed in its wake. We propose a mechanism based on ``dynamic spectrum'' of the wave profile, by which a wave train of solitary pulses can …
In this paper, we prove the existence of two-dimensional, traveling, capillary-gravity, water waves with compactly supported vorticity. Specifically, we consider the cases where the vorticity is a $δ$-function (a point vortex), or has small compact support (a vortex patch). Using a global bifurcation theoretic argument, we construct a continuum of finite-amplitude, finite-vorticity solutions for the periodic point vortex problem. For the non-periodic case, with either a vortex point or patch, we prove the existence of a continuum of small-amplitude, small-vorticity solutions.
In this article, we will prove $L^2(\mathbb{R})$-stability of $1$-solitons for the KdV equation by using exponential stability property of the semigroup generated by the linearized operator. The proof follows the lines of recent stability argument of Mizumachi [Asymptotic stability of lattice solitons in the energy space, Comm. Math. Phys., (2009)] and Mizumachi, Pego and Quintero [Asymptotic stability of solitary waves in the Benney-Luke model of water waves, Differential Integral Equations, (2013)] which show stability in the energy class by using strong linear stability of solitary waves in…
We consider the angle $θ$ of inclination (with respect to the horizontal) of the profile of a steady 2D inviscid symmetric periodic or solitary water wave subject to gravity. Although $θ$ may surpass 30$^\circ$ for some irrotational waves close to the extreme wave, Amick [Ami87] proved that for any irrotational wave the angle must be less than 31.15$^\circ$. Is the situation similar for periodic or solitary waves that are not irrotational? The extreme Gerstner wave has infinite depth, adverse vorticity and vertical cusps ($θ= 90^\circ$). Moreover, numerical calculations show that even waves of…
This survey covers the mathematical theory of steady water waves with an emphasis on topics that are at the forefront of current research. These areas include: variational characterizations of traveling water waves; analytical and numerical studies of periodic waves with critical layers that may overhang; existence, nonexistence, and qualitative theory of solitary waves and fronts; traveling waves with localized vorticity or density stratification; and waves in three dimensions.
The Boussinesq $abcd$ system arises in the modeling of long wave small amplitude water waves in a channel, where the four parameters $(a,b,c,d)$ satisfy one constraint. In this paper we focus on the solitary wave solutions to such a system. In particular we work in two parameter regimes where the system does not admit a Hamiltonian structure (corresponding to $b \ne d$). We prove via analytic global bifurcation techniques the existence of solitary waves in such parameter regimes. Some qualitative properties of the solutions are also derived, from which sharp results can be obtained for the glo…
The Degasperis-Procesi equation is the integrable Camassa-Holm-type model which is an asymptotic approximation for the unidirectional propagation of shallow water waves. This work establishes the orbital stability of localized smooth solitary waves to the Desgasperis-Procesi (DP) equation on the real line. %extending our previous work on their spectral stability \cite{LLW}. The main difficulty stems from the fact that the translation symmetry for the DP equation gives rise to a conserved quantity equivalent to the $L^2$-norm, which by itself can not bound the higher-order nonlinear terms in th…
