Nonlinear stage of the Benjamin-Feir instability: Three-dimensional coherent structures and rogue waves

A specific, genuinely three-dimensional mechanism of rogue wave formation, in a late stage of the modulational instability of a perturbed Stokes deep-water wave, is recognized through numerical experiments. The simulations are based on fully nonlinear equations describing weakly three-dimensional potential flows of an ideal fluid with a free surface in terms of conformal variables. Spontaneous formation of zigzag patterns for wave amplitude is observed in a nonlinear stage of the instability. If initial wave steepness is sufficiently high ($ka>0.06$), these coherent structures produce rogue waves. The most tall waves appear in ``turns'' of the zigzags. For $ka<0.06$, the structures decay typically without formation of steep waves.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PR

"Breathing" rogue wave observed in numerical experiment

Numerical simulations of the recently derived fully nonlinear equations of motion for weakly three-dimensional water waves [V.P. Ruban, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 71}, 055303(R) (2005)] with quasi-random initial conditions are reported, which show the spontaneous formation of a single extreme wave on the deep water. This rogue wave behaves in an oscillating manner and exists for a relatively long time (many wave periods) without significant change of its maximal amplitude.Comment: 6 pages, 12 figure

Numerical simulation of surface waves instability on a discrete grid

We perform full-scale numerical simulation of instability of weakly nonlinear waves on the surface of deep fluid. We show that the instability development leads to chaotization and formation of wave turbulence. We study instability both of propagating and standing waves. We studied separately pure capillary wave unstable due to three-wave interactions and pure gravity waves unstable due to four-wave interactions. The theoretical description of instabilities in all cases is included into the article. The numerical algorithm used in these and many other previous simulations performed by authors is described in details.Comment: 47 pages, 40 figure

Collision of two breathers at surface of deep water

We applied canonical transformation to water wave equation not only to remove cubic nonlinear terms but to simplify drastically fourth order terms in Hamiltonian. This transformation explicitly uses the fact of vanishing exact four waves interaction for water gravity waves for 2D potential fluid. After the transformation well-known but cumbersome Zakharov equation is drastically simplified and can be written in X-space in compact way. This new equation is very suitable as for analytic study as for numerical simulation. Localized in space breather-type solution was found. Numerical simulation of collision of two such breathers strongly supports hypothesis of integrability of 2-D free surface hydrodynamics

Free Surface in 2D Potential Flow: Singularities, Invariants and Virtual Fluid

We study a 2D potential flow of an ideal fluid with a free surface with decaying conditions at infinity. By using the conformal variables approach, we study a particular solution of Euler equations having a pair of square-root branch points in the conformal plane, and find that the analytic continuation of the fluid complex potential and conformal map define a flow in the entire complex plane, excluding a vertical cut between the branch points. The expanded domain is called the "virtual" fluid, and it contains a vortex sheet whose dynamics is equivalent to the equations of motion posed at the free surface. The equations of fluid motion are analytically continued to both sides of the vertical branch cut (the vortex sheet), and additional time-invariants associated with the topology of conformal plane and Kelvin's theorem for virtual fluid are explored. We called them "winding" and virtual circulation. This result can be generalized to a system of many cuts connecting many branch points, and resulting in a pair of invariants for each pair of branch points. We develop an asymptotic theory that shows how a solution originating from a single vertical cut forms a singularity at the free surface in infinite time, the rate of singularity approach is double-exponential, and supercedes the previous result of the short branch cut theory with finite time singularity formation. The present work offers a new look at fluid dynamics with free surface by unifying the problem of motion of vortex sheets, and the problem of 2D water waves. A particularly interesting question that arises in this context is whether instabilities of the virtual vortex sheet are related to breaking of steep ocean waves when gravity effects are included

Numerical modeling of quasiplanar giant water waves

In this work we present a further analytical development and a numerical implementation of the recently suggested theoretical model for highly nonlinear potential long-crested water waves, where weak three-dimensional effects are included as small corrections to exact two-dimensional equations written in the conformal variables [V.P. Ruban, Phys. Rev. E 71, 055303(R) (2005)]. Numerical experiments based on this theory describe the spontaneous formation of a single weakly three-dimensional large-amplitude wave (alternatively called freak, killer, rogue or giant wave) on the deep water.Comment: revtex4, 8 pages, 7 figure