Phase domain walls in weakly nonlinear deep water surface gravity waves

We report a theoretical derivation, an experimental observation and a numerical validation of nonlinear phase domain walls in weakly nonlinear deep water surface gravity waves. The domain walls presented are connecting homogeneous zones of weakly nonlinear plane Stokes waves of identical amplitude and wave vector but differences in phase. By exploiting symmetry transformations within the framework of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation we demonstrate the existence of exact analytical solutions representing such domain walls in the weakly nonlinear limit. The walls are in general oblique to the direction of the wave vector and stationary in moving reference frames. Experimental and numerical studies confirm and visualize the findings. Our present results demonstrate that nonlinear domain walls do exist in the weakly nonlinear regime of general systems exhibiting dispersive waves.

Subjects

Nonlinear Sciences - Pattern Formation and Solitons

DDC Class

530: Physik

600: Technik

620: Ingenieurwissenschaften

Funding(s)

Erregbarkeit extremer Meereswellen - Numerische Vorhersage und Frühwarnung durch Kombination von Verfahren der Wellenphysik, der numerischen Simulation von Bewegungsgleichungen und datenbasierter Verfahren

Funding Organisations

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

More Funding Information

The authors acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Grant No. HO 3852/10.

Publication version

publishedVersion

Lizenz

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Publisher‘s Creditline

To cite this version: F. Tsitoura, U. Gietz, A. Chabchoub, and N. Hoffmann. Phase Domain Walls in Weakly Nonlinear Deep Water Surface Gravity Waves. Physical Review Letters, American Physical Society, 2018, 120 (22), pp. 224102. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.224102

Name

PhysRevLett.120.224102.pdf

Size

904.87 KB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Phase domain walls in weakly nonlinear deep water surface gravity waves