Existence of a highest wave in a fully dispersive two-way shallow water model (Q1710982)

The paper aims to generalize the nonlocal Whitham's equation for waves on the surface of a shallow layer of an inviscid fluid, which was derived, from the Euler's equations, under the assumption of the unidirectional propagation of the surface waves, to a system of coupled equations for the bidirectional propagation. The single Witham equation reproduces the usual dispersion relation for unidirectional waves. The coupled system produces the same dispersion relation which is generated by the full system of the Euler's equation. The Witham equations, both the single one and coupled equations, contain the same quadratic nonlinearity as the local Korteweg-de Vries equation. The objective of the analysis is to consider the properties of periodic waves produced by the coupled system. The main issue is the identification of the cusp singularity of the wave solution with the largest amplitude, beyond which the wave breaking takes place. While the single Witham equation gives rise to the singularity of the type of \(|x|^{1/2}\), the coupled system produces a different singularity, \(\sim |x\log(|x|)|\). The presence of the logarithmic factor makes it necessary to redefine the functional space in which the solutions are analyzed.