Pairwise Interactions of Coherent Structures on the Surface of Deep Water

Abstract

The interactions of coherent structures (different types of solitary wave groups) on the surface of deep water is an important nonlinear wave process, which has been studied both theoretically and experimentally (Dyachenko et al., 2013a, b; Slunyaev et al., 2017). At the moment, a complete theoretical description of such interactions is known only for the simplest model – the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NSE) where exact multi-soliton solutions are found. In the work (Kachulin, Gelash, 2018), the dynamics of pairwise interactions of coherent structures (breathers) on the surface of deep water were numerically investigated in the framework of the Dyachenko-Zakharov model. Significant differences were found in the collision dynamics of breathers of the compact Dyachenko-Zakharov equation when compared to the behavior of the NLSE solitons. It was found that in a more precise model of gravitational surface waves, in contrast to the NLSE, the maximum amplification of the wave field amplitude during the collision process of coherent structures can exceed the sum of the initial amplitudes of the breathers. In addition, the maximum amplification of the wave field amplitude increases with increasing steepness of the interacting breathers and exceeds unity by 20% at the value of the wave steepness m ≈ 0.2. It was revealed that an important parameter determining the dynamics of pairwise collisions of breathers is the relative phase of these objects at the moment of interaction. The interaction of breathers in the non-integrable Dyachenko-Zakharov model leads to the appearance of small radiation, which was discovered earlier in 2013 (Dyachenko et al., 2013a, b). In the work (Kachulin, Gelash, 2018) we demonstrate that the magnitude of the energy losses of the colliding solitons to radiation also depends on their relative phase. Maximum of the energy losses is observed at the same relative phase, at which the amplitude amplification maximum is observed. In addition, depending on the value of the relative phase, solitons can both gain and lose the energy, which results in increase or decrease of their amplitude after a collision. It was found that, in contrast to the NSE model, the spatial shifts of solitons in a more precise model can be both positive and negative. We use the exact breather solutions of the Dyachenko-Zakharov model and the canonical transformation to physical variables (the free surface profile and the potential on the liquid surface) to find approximate solutions in the form of breathers within the framework of exact nonlinear equations for potential incompressible fluid flows. The preliminary results of our numerical experiments in the exact model demonstrate similar dynamics of the interaction of breathers, which indicates that the theoretical picture of the interaction of coherent structures presented here is universal and can be observed in laboratory experiments. The study of the dynamics of breather interactions in the exact model performed by D.I. Kachulin was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Grant No. 18-71-00079). The work of V.E. Zakharov and A.I. Dyachenko on the dynamics of breather interactions in approximate models was supported by the state assignment “Dynamics of the complex materials”.