Rogue waves: Classification, measurement and data analysis, and hyperfast numerical modeling

Abstract

The last twenty years has seen the birth and subsequent evolution of a fundamental new idea in nonlinear wave research: Rogue waves, freak waves or extreme events in the wave field dynamics can often be classified as coherent structure solutions of the requisite nonlinear partial differential wave equations (PDEs). Since a large number of generic nonlinear PDEs occur across many branches of physics, the approach is widely applicable to many fields including the dynamics of ocean surface waves, internal waves, plasma waves, acoustic waves, nonlinear optics, solid state physics, geophysical fluid dynamics and turbulence (vortex dynamics and nonlinear waves), just to name a few. The first goal of this paper is to give a classification scheme for solutions of this type using the inverse scattering transform (IST) with periodic boundary conditions. In this context the methods of algebraic geometry give the solutions of particular PDEs in terms of Riemann theta functions. In the classification scheme the Riemann spectrum fully defines the coherent structure solutions and their mutual nonlinear interactions. I discuss three methods for determining the Riemann spectrum: (1) algebraic-geometric loop integrals, (2) Schottky uniformization and (3) the Nakamura-Boyd approach. I give an overview of several nonlinear wave equations and graph some of their coherent structure solutions using theta functions. The second goal is to discuss how theta functions can be used for developing data analysis (nonlinear Fourier) algorithms; nonlinear filtering techniques allow for the extraction of coherent structures from time series. The third goal is to address hyperfast numerical models of nonlinear wave equations (which are thousands of times faster than traditional spectral methods).