Periodic waves are investigated in a system composed of a
Kuramoto-Sivashinsky - Korteweg-de Vries (KS-KdV) equation, which is linearly
coupled to an extra linear dissipative equation. The model describes, e.g., a
two-layer liquid film flowing down an inclined plane. It has been recently
shown that the system supports stable solitary pulses. We demonstrate that a
perturbation analysis, based on the balance equation for the field momentum,
predicts the existence of stable cnoidal waves (CnWs) in the same system. It is
found that the mean value U of the wave field u in the main subsystem, but not
the mean value of the extra field, affects the stability of the periodic waves.
Three different areas can be distinguished inside the stability region in the
parameter plane (L,U), where L is the wave's period. In these areas, stable
are, respectively, CnWs with positive velocity, constant solutions, and CnWs
with negative velocity. Multistability, i.e., the coexistence of several
attractors, including the waves with several maxima per period, appears at
large value of L. The analytical predictions are completely confirmed by direct
simulations. Stable waves are also found numerically in the limit of vanishing
dispersion, when the KS-KdV equation goes over into the KS one.Comment: a latex text file and 16 eps files with figures. Journal of the
Physical Society of Japan, in pres