Existence of perturbed solitary wave solutions to a model equation for water waves

Abstract

We prove the existence of travelling wave solutions to a fifth order partial differential equation, which is a formal asymptotic approximation for water waves with surface tension. These travelling waves are arbitrarily small perturbations of solitary waves, but are not solitary waves themselves, because they approach small amplitude oscillations for large values of the independent variable. This result suggests that for Bond numbers less than one third, there are branches of travelling wave solutions to the water wave equations, which are perturbations of supercritical elevation solitary waves, and which bifurcate from Froude number one and Bond number one third.