Exact Theory of Solitary Waves on Water with Surface Tension

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Monday, November 8, 2010 - 11:00am for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 169
Speaker
Shu-Ming Sun – Virginia Tech – http://www.math.vt.edu/people/sun/
Organizer
Chongchun Zeng
The talk concerns the mathematical aspects of solitary waves (i.e. single hump waves) moving with a constant speed on water of finite depth with surface tension using fully nonlinear Euler equations governing the motion of the fluid flow. The talk will first give a quick formal derivation of the solitary-wave solutions from the Euler equations and then focus on the mathematical theory of existence and stability of two-dimensional solitary waves. The recent development on the existence and stability of various three-dimensional waves will also be discussed.