Directional Soliton and Breather Beams

We demonstrate experimentally multi-bound-soliton solutions of the Nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (NLS) in the context of surface gravity waves. In particular, the Satsuma-Yajima N-soliton solution with N=2,3,4 is investigated in detail. Such solutions, also known as breathers on zero background, lead to periodic self-focussing in the wave group dynamics, and the consequent generation of a steep localized carrier wave underneath the group envelope. Our experimental results ...

The existence and properties of envelope solitary waves on a periodic, traveling wave background, called traveling breathers, are investigated numerically in representative nonlocal dispersive media. Using a fixed point computational scheme, a space-time boundary value problem for bright traveling breather solutions is solved for the weakly nonlinear Benjamin-Bona-Mahony equation, a nonlocal, regularized shallow water wave model, and the strongly nonlinear conduit equation, a...

We present a brief discussion on the nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equation for modeling the propagation of the deep-water wavetrains and a discussion on its doubly-localized breather solutions that can be connected to the sudden formation of extreme waves, also known as rogue waves or freak waves.

It is well known that the water-wave problem with weak surface tension has small-amplitude line solitary-wave solutions which to leading order are described by the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. The present paper contains an existence theory for three-dimensional periodically modulated solitary-wave solutions which have a solitary-wave profile in the direction of propagation and are periodic in the transverse direction; they emanate from the line solitary waves in a dimens...

Optical rogue waves are rare yet extreme fluctuations in the value of an optical field. The terminology was first used in the context of an analogy between pulse propagation in optical fibre and wave group propagation on deep water, but has since been generalized to describe many other processes in optics. This paper provides an overview of this field, concentrating primarily on propagation in optical fibre systems that exhibit nonlinear breather and soliton dynamics, but als...

We study experimentally, in a large-scale basin, the propagation of unidirectional deep water gravity waves stochastically modulated in phase. We observe the emergence of nonlinear localized structures that evolve on a stochastic wave background. Such a coexistence is expected by the integrable turbulence theory for the nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equation (NLSE), and we report the first experimental observation in the context of hydrodynamic waves. We characterize the formatio...

Solitons and breathers are localized solutions of integrable systems that can be viewed as "particles'' of complex statistical objects called soliton and breather gases. In view of the growing evidence of their ubiquity in fluids and nonlinear optical media these "integrable'' gases present fundamental interest for nonlinear physics. We develop analytical theory of breather and soliton gases by considering a special, thermodynamic type limit of the wavenumber-frequency relati...

The formation of extreme localizations in nonlinear dispersive media can be explained and described within the framework of nonlinear evolution equations, such as the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (NLS). Within the class of exact NLS breather solutions on finite background, which describe the modulational instability of monochromatic wave trains, the hierarchy of both in time and space localized rational solutions are considered to be appropriate prototypes to model rogue ...

We consider in detail the self-trapping of a soliton from a wave pulse that passes from a defocussing region into a focussing one in a spatially inhomogeneous nonlinear waveguide, described by a nonlinear Schrodinger equation in which the dispersion coefficient changes its sign from normal to anomalous. The model has direct applications to dispersion-decreasing nonlinear optical fibers, and to natural waveguides for internal waves in the ocean. It is found that, depending on ...

Soliton gases represent large random soliton ensembles in physical systems that display integrable dynamics at the leading order. We report hydrodynamic experiments in which we investigate the interaction between two "beams" or "jets" of soliton gases having nearly identical amplitudes but opposite velocities of the same magnitude. The space-time evolution of the two interacting soliton gas jets is recorded in a 140-m long water tank where the dynamics is described at leading...