Roles of sideband instability and mode coupling in forming a water-wave chaos (Q1276617)

Using a high-order spectral method with sufficient resolution, we perform computations to describe the long-term evolution of deep-water Stokes waves perturbed by various sidebands. We also investigate the roles of sideband instability and mode coupling in forming chaos, and the characteristics of waves in chaos. Relationships between Fourier-modes evolution and the initial states of the primary mode and its sidebands are clarified. Simple evolution (the so-called Fermi-Pasta-Ulma recurrence) is very rare and is possible only under the condition that only a single pair of sidebands may have energy permanently. Most evolutions are complex and finally result in chaotic behavior. By means of high-order nonlinear modelling with sufficiently many degrees of freedom, we show that the Stokes waves in deep water form a chaotic system. Further, the computational results imply that water waves in chaos converge on spectra obeying wave number power laws dependent only on the steepness \(ka\), and may be regarded as a coherent bound-wave system where the Fourier modes with high wave numbers have approximately the same phase velocity.