Speaker: Paolo Ventura , University of Milan
Date: April 3, 2025
Title: Instability Isolas of Stokes Waves
Abstract: Stokes waves are the simplest nontrivial form of water waves, featuring a periodic profile moving steadily in one direction. In the '70s, Benjamin and Feir discovered through experiments that the steady profile is unstable under long-wave perturbations, i.e. disturbances that, although small in amplitude, have much longer period than the initial wave. In recent years, significant mathematical progress has been made on this 'modulational' instability, particularly in the linear approximation, which involves understanding the $L^2(\mathbb R)$-spectrum of the water wave operator linearized along a Stokes wave.
Location: Residents of Lewis Hall can attend talks in the Wan Conference Room (Lewis 208) at 11:00am. The talk will also be streamed live via Zoom.