Transverse instability of the line solitary water-waves (Q538406)

The instability problem of the specific free boundary flow is studied in detail in the paper. The fluid occupies an unknown domain \[ \Omega_t=\{(x,y,z)\in {\mathbb R}^3:\;-h<z<\eta(x,y,t)\}. \] The function \(\eta\) defines the free boundary. The authors consider the motion of an irrational, incompressible fluid with constant density. The potential \(\varphi(x,y,z,t)\) of the velocity satisfies to the equations \[ \begin{aligned} &\Delta \varphi=0\quad \text{in}\;\Omega_t, \quad \frac{\partial\varphi}{\partial z}(x,y,-h,t)=0,\\ &\frac{\partial \eta}{\partial t}+\nabla_X \varphi(X,\eta(X,t),t)\cdot\nabla_X\eta(X,t)-\frac{\partial\varphi}{\partial z}(X,\eta(X,t),t)=0,\\ &\frac{\partial\varphi}{\partial t} (X,\eta(X,t),t)+\frac{1}{2}|\nabla_Y \varphi(X,\eta(X,t),t)|^2+g\eta(X,t)= \nabla\cdot\frac{\nabla_X\eta(X,t)}{\sqrt{1+|\nabla_X\eta(X,t)|^2}}.\end{aligned} \] Here \(X=(x,y)\in{\mathbb R}^2\), \(Y=(X,z)\), \(b\) is the surface tension coefficient, \(g\) is the gravitational constant. A solitary wave is a stationary solution to the problem. It is proved in [\textit{C. Amick} and \textit{K. Kirchgässner}, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 105, 1--49 (1989; Zbl 0666.76046)] that the problem has a stationary solution of a certain form. The main result of the reviewing paper is that the solitary wave solutions are unstable when submitted to two-dimensional localized perturbations. The instability is stated in the \(L^2\) norm. The first important step of investigation is the proof of the linear instability.