title: A dimension-breaking phenomenon in the theory of steady gravity-capillary water waves.
abstract: The existence of a line solitary-wave solution to the water-wave problem with strong surface-tension effects was predicted on the basis of a model equation in the celebrated 1895 paper by D. J. Korteweg and G. de Vries and rigorously confirmed a century later by C. J. Amick and K. Kirchgässner in 1989. A model equation derived by B. B. Kadomtsev and V. I. Petviashvili in 1970 suggests that the Korteweg-de Vries line solitary wave belongs to a family of periodically modulated solitary waves which have a solitary-wave profile in the direction of motion and are periodic in the transverse direction. This prediction is rigorously confirmed for the full water-wave problem in the present paper. It is shown that the Korteweg-de Vries solitary wave undergoes a dimension-breaking bifurcation that generates a family of periodically modulated solitary waves. The term dimension-breaking phenomenon describes the spontaneous emergence of a spatially inhomogeneous solution of a partial differential equation from a solution which is homogeneous in one or more spatial dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK.
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Groves
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haragus
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D006112:Gravitation; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009038:Motion; D012212:Rheology / Q000379:methods*; D013500:Surface Tension; D014867:Water; D014872:Water Movements
chemical_list: D014867:Water