Unsteady undular bores in fully nonlinear shallow-water theory

We consider unsteady undular bores for a pair of coupled equations of Boussinesq-type which contain the familiar fully nonlinear dissipationless shallow-water dynamics and the leading-order fully nonlinear dispersive terms. This system contains one horizontal space dimension and time and can be systematically derived from the full Euler equations for irrotational flows with a free surface using a standard long-wave asymptotic expansion. In this context the system was first derived by Su and Gardner. It coincides with the one-dimensional flat-bottom reduction of the Green-Naghdi system and, additionally, has recently found a number of fluid dynamics applications other than the present context of shallow-water gravity waves. We then use the Whitham modulation theory for a one-phase periodic travelling wave to obtain an asymptotic analytical description of an undular bore in the Su-Gardner system for a full range of "depth" ratios across the bore. The positions of the leading and trailing edges of the undular bore and the amplitude of the leading solitary wave of the bore are found as functions of this "depth ratio". The formation of a partial undular bore with a rapidly-varying finite-amplitude trailing wave front is predicted for ``depth ratios'' across the bore exceeding 1.43. The analytical results from the modulation theory are shown to be in excellent agreement with full numerical solutions for the development of an undular bore in the Su-Gardner system.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication in Phys. Fluids, 51 pages, 9 figure

Physical Mechanisms of the Rogue Wave Phenomenon

A review of physical mechanisms of the rogue wave phenomenon is given. The data of marine observations as well as laboratory experiments are briefly discussed. They demonstrate that freak waves may appear in deep and shallow waters. Simple statistical analysis of the rogue wave probability based on the assumption of a Gaussian wave field is reproduced. In the context of water wave theories the probabilistic approach shows that numerical simulations of freak waves should be made for very long times on large spatial domains and large number of realizations. As linear models of freak waves the following mechanisms are considered: dispersion enhancement of transient wave groups, geometrical focusing in basins of variable depth, and wave-current interaction. Taking into account nonlinearity of the water waves, these mechanisms remain valid but should be modified. Also, the influence of the nonlinear modulational instability (Benjamin-Feir instability) on the rogue wave occurence is discussed. Specific numerical simulations were performed in the framework of classical nonlinear evolution equations: the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, the Davey - Stewartson system, the Korteweg - de Vries equation, the Kadomtsev - Petviashvili equation, the Zakharov equation, and the fully nonlinear potential equations. Their results show the main features of the physical mechanisms of rogue wave phenomenon

Long Waves in Ocean and Coastal Waters

Water waves occurring in the ocean have a wide spectrum of wavelength and period, ranging from capillary waves of 1 cm or shorter wavelength to long waves with wavelength being large compared to ocean depth, anywhere from tens to thousands of kilometers. Of the various long-wavegenic sources, distant body forces can act as the continuous ponderomotive force for the tides. Hurricanes and storms in the sea can develop a sea state, with the waves being worked on by winds and eventually cascading down to swells after a long distance of travel away from their birthplace. Large tsunamis can be ascribed to a rapidly occurring tectonic displacement of the ocean floor (usually near the coast of the Pacific Ocean) over a large horizontal dimension (of hundreds to over a thousand square kilometers) during strong earthquakes, causing vertical displacements to ocean floor of tens of meters. Other generation mechanisms include underwater subsidence or land avalanche in the ocean and submarine volcanic eruption. Gigantic rockfalls and long-period seismic waves can also produce gravity waves in lakes, reservoirs, and rivers. Generation, propagation, and evolution of such long waves in the ocean and their effects in coastal waters and harbors is a subject of increasing importance in civil, coastal, and environmental engineering and science. Of the various long wave phenomena, tsunami appears to stand out in possessing a broad variation of wave characteristics and scaling parameters on the one hand, and, on the other, in having the capacity of inflicting a disastrous effect on the target area. In taking tsunamis as a representative case for the study of long waves in the ocean, it can be said that large tsunamis are generated with a great source of potential energy (as high as 10^15-10^16J ), though the detailed source motion of a specific tsunami is generally difficult to determine. The large size of source region implies that the "new born" waves would be initially long and the energy contained in the large wave-number part (k, nondimensionalized with respect to the local ocean depth, h) would be unimportant. Soon after leaving the source region, the low wave-number components of the source spectrum are further dispersed effectively by the factor sech kh into the even lower wave-number parts. Tsunamis thus evolve into a train of long waves, with wavelength continually increasing from about 50 km to as high as 250 km, but with a quite small amplitude, typically of 1/2 m or smaller, as they travel across the Pacific Ocean at a speed of 650 km/h-760 km/h. There is experimental evidence indicating that tsunamis continually, though slowly, evolve due to dispersion while propagating in the open ocean; this property has been observed by Van Dorn (16) from the data taken at Wake Island of the March 9, 1957 Aleutian tsunami. One of our primary interests is, of course, the evolution of tsumanis in coastal waters and their terminal effects. Large tsunamis can have their wave height amplified many fold in climbing up the continental slope and propagating into shallower water, producing devastating waves (up to 20 m or higher on record) upon arriving at a beach. The terminal amplification can be crucially affected by three-dimensional configurations of the coastal environment enroute to beach. These factors dictate the transmission, reflection, rate of growth, and trapping of tsunamis in their terminal stage. After the first hit on target, a tsunami is partly reflected to travel once over across the Pacific Ocean, with some degree of attenuation -- a process which is still unclear, but is generally known to be small. Based on observations, Munk (13) suggests the figure of the "decay time" (intensity reducing to 1/e) being about 112 day, and the "reverberation time" (intensity falling off to 10^-6) about a week, while the reflection frequency (across the Pacific) is around 1.7/day. To fix idea, the pertinent physical characteristics and their scaling parameters of a tsunami through its life span of evolution can be described qualitatively in Table I. From the aforementioned estimate we note that the dispersion parameter, h/[lambda], and the amplitude parameter, a/h, are both small in general. However, their competitive roles as rated by the Ursell number Ur, can increase from some small values in the deep ocean, typically of order 10^-2 for large tsunamis, by a factor of 10^3 upon arriving in near-shore waters. This indicates that the effects of nonlinearity (amplitude dispersion) are practically nonexistent in the deep ocean, but gradually become more important and can no longer be neglected when the Ursell number increases to order unity or greater during the terminal stage in which the coastal effects manifest. The small values of the dimensionless wave number, kh = 2[pi]h/[lamda] being in the range of 0.6-0.03 during travel in open ocean, suggests that a slight dispersive effect is still present and this can lead to an accumulated effect in predicting the phase position over very large distances of travel. The overall evolution of tsunamis, as only crudely characterized in Table 1, depends in fact on many factors such as the features of source motion, nonlinear and dispersive effects on propagation in one and two dimensions, the three-dimensional configuration of the coastal region, the direction of incidence, converging or diverging passage of the waves, local reflection and adsorption, density stratification in water, etc. While these aspects of physical behavior are akin to tsunamis, they are also relevant to the consideration of other long wave phenomena. With an intent to provide a sound basis for general applications to long wave phenomena in nature, this paper presents (in the section on three-dimensional long-wave models) a basic long-wave equation which is of the Boussinesq class with special reference to tsunami propagation in two horizontal dimensions through water having spatial and temporal variations in depth. Under certain particular conditions (such as the propagation in one space dimension, or primarily one space dimensional of long waves in water of constant depth) this equation reduces to the Korteweg-de Vries equation or the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. In these special cases we have seen the impressive developments in recent studies of the "soliton-bearing" nonlinear partial differential equations by means of such methods as the variational modulation, the inverse scattering analysis, and modern differential geometry (12,14,17). While extensions of these methods to more general cases will require further major developments, the present analysis and survey will concentrate on the three-dimensional (with propagation in two horizontal dimensions) effects under various conditions by examining the validity of different wave models (based on neglecting the effects of nonlinearity, dispersion, or reflection) in different circumstances. From the example of self focusing of weakly-nonlinear waves (given in the section on converging cylindrical long waves), the effects of nonlinearity, dispersion, and reflection will be seen all to play such a major role that the present basic equation cannot be further modified without suffering from a significant loss of accuracy

Some Open Problems in Random Matrix Theory and the Theory of Integrable Systems. II

We describe a list of open problems in random matrix theory and the theory of integrable systems that was presented at the conference Asymptotics in Integrable Systems, Random Matrices and Random Processes and Universality, Centre de Recherches Mathematiques, Montreal, June 7-11, 2015. We also describe progress that has been made on problems in an earlier list presented by the author on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2005 (see [Deift P., Contemp. Math., Vol. 458, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2008, 419-430, arXiv:0712.0849]).Comment: for Part I see arXiv:0712.084