Stabilizing the Benjamin-Feir Instability
by
Harvey Segur
University of Colorado
Coauthors: J.L. Hammack, Diane Henderson, Dana Pheiff, Katherine Socha

The Benjamin-Feir instability is a modulational instability in which a uniform train of oscillatory waves of finite amplitude loses energy to a small perturbation of waves with nearly the same frequency and direction. The concept is well established in water waves, in plasmas, and in optics. Even so, we show that any amount of dissipation (of a certain type), no matter how small, stabilizes this instability. We confirm this theoretical result with laboratory experiments on waves in deep water.

Date received: October 29, 2003