Near-linear Dynamics for Shallow Water Waves

Abstract

It is shown that spatially periodic one-dimensional surface waves in shallow water behave almost linearly, provided large part of the energy is contained in sufficiently high frequencies. The amplitude is not required to be small (apart from the shallow water approximation assumption) and the near-linear behavior occurs on a much longer time scale than might be anticipated based on the amplitude size. Heuristically speaking, this effect is due to the nonlinearity getting averaged by the dispersive action. This result is obtained by an averaging procedure, which is briefly outlined, and is also confirmed by numerical simulations.