Full description of Benjamin-Feir instability of Stokes waves

Abstract: Stokes waves, which are small amplitude space periodic solutions of the gravity water waves, are unstable to long-wave perturbations, as Benjamin and Feir predicted in 1967.

In this talk I will describe a series of recent results that fully describe the spectrum of the linearized operator at a Stokes wave, both near the origin – proving that such spectrum depicts a complete “figure 8” – and away from the origin – proving the existence of isolas of instability. This is based on a series of works with M. Berti, L. Corsi and P. Ventura.

mathematical physicsspectral theory

Audience: researchers in the topic

Munich-Copenhagen-Santiago Mathematical Physics seminar

Series comments: The MAS-MP seminar series has now changed name to MCS-MP.

Please contact one of the organizers to get the zoom details.