Title: Modulational stability of ocean swell
Diane Henderson
Short Abstract
Narrow-banded plane waves at the air-water interface of an inviscid fluid were shown to be unstable to modulational perturbations by several investigators in the late 60s, including Benjamin & Feir. More recently, Segur et al showed, with theory and laboratory experiments, that dissipation stabilizes this Benjamin-Feir instability. Here we discuss this stability result in the context of ocean swell on deep water and its subsequent propagation onto water of finite depth with slowly-varying bathymetry.
SPONSORS
University of Michigan Sponsors
- Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics
- Center for Studies of Complex Systems
- Medical School
- Department of Mathematics
- Department of Physics
- Biophysics Program