Solitary wave solutions of a Whitham–Boussinesq system

Abstract

The travelling wave problem for a particular bidirectional Whitham system modelling surface water waves is under consideration. This system firstly appeared in Dinvay et al. (2019), where it was numerically shown to be stable and a good approximation to the incompressible Euler equations. In subsequent papers (Dinvay, 2019; Dinvay et al., 2019) the initial-value problem was studied and well-posedness in classical Sobolev spaces was proved. Here we prove existence of solitary wave solutions and provide their asymptotic description. Our proof relies on a variational approach and a concentration-compactness argument. The main difficulties stem from the fact that in the considered Euler–Lagrange equation we have a non-local operator of positive order appearing both in the linear and non-linear parts. Our approach allows us to obtain solitary waves for a particular Boussinesq system as well.