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Structure and location of branch point singularities for Stokes waves on deep water

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2016

Pavel M. Lushnikov*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, MSC01 1115, NM 87131, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: plushnik@math.unm.edu

Abstract

The Stokes wave is a finite-amplitude periodic gravity wave propagating with constant velocity in an inviscid fluid. The complex analytical structure of the Stokes wave is analysed using a conformal mapping of a free fluid surface of the Stokes wave onto the real axis with the fluid domain mapped onto the lower complex half-plane. There is one square root branch point per spatial period of the Stokes wavelocated in the upper complex half-plane at a distance $v_{c}$ from the real axis. The increase of Stokes wave height results in $v_{c}$ approaching zero with the limiting Stokes wave formation at $v_{c}=0$ . The limiting Stokes wave has a $2/3$ power-law singularity forming a $2{\rm\pi}/3$ radians angle on the crest which is qualitatively different from the square root singularity valid for arbitrary small but non-zero $v_{c}$ , making the limit of zero $v_{c}$ highly non-trivial. That limit is addressed by crossing a branch cut of a square root into the second and subsequently higher sheets of the Riemann surface to find coupled square root singularities at distances $\pm v_{c}$ from the real axis at each sheet. The number of sheets is infinite and the analytical continuation of the Stokes wave into all of these sheets is found together with the series expansion in half-integer powers at singular points within each sheet. It is conjectured that a non-limiting Stokes wave at the leading order consists of an infinite number of nested square root singularities which also implies the existence in the third and higher sheets of additional square root singularities away from the real and imaginary axes. These nested square roots form a $2/3$ power-law singularity of the limiting Stokes wave as $v_{c}$ vanishes.

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© 2016 Cambridge University Press 
Figure 0

Figure 1. A schematic of Riemann surface sheets for a non-limiting Stokes wave in the complex variable ${\it\zeta}$ (1.6) near the origin. The first (physical) sheet (a) has a single square root singularity at ${\it\zeta}=\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}$ in the upper complex half-plane $\mathbb{C}^{+}$ with the lower complex half-plane $\mathbb{C}^{-}$ corresponding to the domain occupied by the fluid. Other (non-physical) sheets have square root singularities at ${\it\zeta}=\pm \text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}$. Dashed lines show branch cuts. In addition there are the singularities at ${\it\zeta}=\pm \text{i}$ in all sheets which corresponds to $w=\infty$. Starting from the third sheet (c) there are square root singularities away from both the real and imaginary axes at distances more that several times ${\it\chi}_{c}$, i.e. well beyond the disks of convergence $|{\it\zeta}\pm \text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}|<2{\it\chi}_{c}$.

Figure 1

Figure 2. A schematic of integrating contours in different sheets of the Riemann surface in the complex variable ${\it\zeta}$ (1.6) near the origin. The first (physical) sheet (a) has a square root singularity only at ${\it\zeta}=\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}$ in $\mathbb{C}^{+}.$ Then integrating the ODE (3.4) over the closed contour $ABCDA$ provides the analytical continuation into the second sheet (b) of the surface as the branch cut (dashed line) is crossed. As a result, $z({\it\zeta})$ does not return to its initial value at the origin $0$. In contrast, integrating the ODE (3.4) over the closed contour $ABEFA$ (or over $ABCDA$ provided its height falls below ${\it\zeta}=\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}$), one does not cross the branch cut so $z({\it\zeta})$ returns to the same value at the origin with $z({\it\zeta})$ remaining in the first sheet. The second sheet has the second square root branch point singularity at ${\it\zeta}=-\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c}$ at the lower complex half-plane $\mathbb{C}^{-}$. Integrating over contour $ABEFA$ in the second sheet results in the analytical continuation of $z({\it\zeta})$ into the third sheet (b) of the Riemann surface. Starting from the third sheet, extra square root branch points appear away from the imaginary axis. Branch cuts for these off-axis singularities are chosen to be extended horizontally as shown by dashed lines in (c,d). The number of these branch points grows with the growth of the sheet number, as schematically shown in (d). We avoid crossing these branch by modifying contours $ABCDA$ and $ABEFA$, as shown in (c,d). Note that these two contours must by symmetric with respect to the real line even if the chosen pair of off-axis singularities (symmetric with respect to the imaginary axis) are located only in one of the complex half-planes $\mathbb{C}^{+}$ and $\mathbb{C}^{-}$ in the given sheet. This is because $\bar{z}({\it\zeta})$ is needed for the integration of the ODE (3.4).

Figure 2

Figure 3. The amplitude $|\tilde{z}({\it\zeta})|$ (a) and the argument $\text{Arg}(\tilde{z}({\it\zeta}))$ (b) versus arclength in the variable ${\it\zeta}$ (scaled by ${\it\chi}_{c}$) along the closed contour $0BCDA0$ shown in figure 2(a) (the contour is passed twice in the counterclockwise direction) for ODE integration (which provides the analytical continuation of the Stokes wave in the complex plane) of the Stokes wave solution with $H/{\it\lambda}=0.1387112446\ldots$ (corresponding to ${\it\chi}_{c}=3.0056373876\ldots \cdot 10^{-3}$, see table 1 of appendix C for details on the numerical Stokes wave). The contour width is $|AB|=2|0B|=2{\it\chi}_{c}$. Solid lines are for the contour height $|BC|=4{\it\chi}_{c}$ (the contour $0BCDA0$ twice crosses the branch cut $[\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c},\text{i}]$ in the counterclockwise direction) and dotted lines are for the contour height $|BC|={\it\chi}_{c}/2$ (for this height, the contour $0BCDA0$ does not cross the branch cut $[\text{i}{\it\chi}_{c},\text{i}]$ and the total arclength is smaller). It is seen that the solid lines are periodic over the total arclength (two round trips around the contour $0BCDA0$ are needed to return to the initial value $z(0)$ in the first sheet of the Riemann surface) compared with the half-arclength periodicity of the dotted lines (the contour $0BCDA0$ is located in the first sheet only with one roundtrip sufficient to return to the initial value $z(0)$).

Figure 3

Figure 4. A comparison of the limiting Stokes wave (dotted line) with (8.7) and the numerical solution for the Stokes wave (the last two of these are shown by the single solid line because they are visually indistinguishable with maximum difference between them $\simeq 4\times 10^{-6}$) for ${\it\chi}_{c}=2.9691220994\ldots \times 10^{-7}$. Solid line corresponds to $-50{\it\chi}_{c}\leqslant {\it\zeta}\leqslant 50{\it\chi}_{c}$.

Figure 4

Table 1. A sample of numerical values of ${\it\chi}_{c}$ versus the scaled Stokes wave height $H/{\it\lambda}$.

Figure 5

Table 2. Parameters of the three highest Stokes waves of table 1 from Tanveer (1991). Units are converted to the notation of this paper with the same number of digits kept as in Tanveer (1991).

Figure 6

Table 3. A sample of the numerical values of $a_{-,2n,0}$ and $a_{+,2n+1,0}$, $n=1,2,3$, for different ${\it\chi}_{c}$. More accurate numerical values of ${\it\chi}_{c}$ can be recovered from table 1.