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 center manifold reduction technique. The large-amplitude theory is obtained through analytical global bifurcation together with refined qualitative properties of the waves.
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…
Frequently encountered in nature, internal solitary waves in stratified fluids are well-observed and well-studied from the experimental, the theoretical, and the numerical perspective. From the mathematical point of view, these waves are exact solutions of the 2D Euler equations for incompressible, inviscid fluids. Contrasting with a rich theory for their existence and the development of methods for computing these waves, their stability analysis has hardly received attention at a rigorous mathematical level. This paper proposes a new approach to the investigation of stability of internal soli…
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.
In this note, we define a moment of instability m(c) for internal solitary waves in continuously stratified fluids, which seems not to have been done before. To underline the suitability of the proposed moment of instability, we identify the relation m"(c)=0 as a formal Fredholm condition, and we show that m(c) displays a definite sign for small-amplitude waves.
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.
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 …
In this paper, we mainly consider two class of travelling stratified periodic water waves, one with negative (or without) surface tension and the other with constant Bernoulli's function and stagnation points. We first establish the symmetry result for stratified water waves with negative (or without) surface tension, but without stagnation by using the modified maximum principle. Furthermore, the symmetry property of stratified water waves with constant Bernoulli's function and stagnation points is also obtained provided the monotonic property is known.
We consider Euler's equations for free surface waves traveling on a body of density stratified water in the scenario when gravity and surface tension act as restoring forces. The flow is continuously stratified, and the water layer is bounded from below by an impermeable horizontal bed. For this problem we establish three equivalent classical formulations in a suitable setting of strong solutions which may describe nevertheless waves with singular density gradients. Based upon this equivalence we then construct two-dimensional symmetric periodic traveling waves that are monotone between each c…
We prove the existence of small steady periodic capillary-gravity water waves for general stratified flows, where we allow for stagnation points in the flow. We establish the existence of both laminar and non-laminar flow solutions for the governing equations. This is achieved by using bifurcation theory and estimates based on the ellipticity of the system, where we regard, in turn, the mass-flux and surface tension as bifurcation parameters.
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…
We prove real analyticity of all the streamlines, including the free surface, of a steady stratified flow of water over a flat bed in the absence of stagnation points, with a Hölder continuous Bernoulli function and a Hölder continuously differentiable density function. Furthermore, we show that if the Bernoulli function and the density function possess some Gevrey regularity of index s, then the stream function admits the same Gevrey regularity throughout the fluid domain; in particular if the Gevrey index s equals to 1, then we obtain analyticity of the stream function. The regularity result…
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…
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…
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.
This paper considers two-dimensional steady continuous stratified periodic water waves. Firstly, we prove that each streamline must be symmetric about the crest line when it is strictly monotonous between troughs and crests by exploiting the maximum principle and analysis of surface profile. Then, standard Schauder estimates are exploited on the uniform oblique derivative problems to show that all streamlines are real analytic (including the free surface). Based on above symmetry and regularity of streamlines, finally we provide an analytic expansion method to recover the water waves from hori…
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.
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.
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…
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 …
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.
There are two distinct regimes commonly used to model traveling waves in stratified water: continuous stratification, where the density is smooth throughout the fluid, and layer-wise continuous stratification, where the fluid consists of multiple immiscible strata. The former is the more physically accurate description, but the latter is frequently more amenable to analysis and computation. By the conservation of mass, the density is constant along the streamlines of the flow; the stratification can therefore be specified by prescribing the value of the density on each streamline. We call this…
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…
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…
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…
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.
This paper considers two-dimensional stratified water waves propagating under the force of gravity over an impermeable flat bed and with a free surface. We prove the existence of a global continuum of classical solutions that are periodic and traveling. These waves, moreover, can exhibit large density variation, speed and amplitude.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
Our aim is to study the effect of a continuous prescribed density variation on the propagation of ocean waves. More precisely, we derive KdV-type shallow water model equations for unidirectional flows along the Equator from the full governing equations by taking into account a prescribed but arbitrary depth-dependent density distribution. In contrast to the case of constant density, we obtain for each fixed water depth a different model equation for the horizontal component of the velocity field. We derive explicit formulas for traveling wave solutions of these model equations and perform a de…
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 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…
