Traveling gravity water waves with critical layers

Abstract

We establish the existence of small-amplitude uni- and bimodal steady periodic gravity waves with an affine vorticity distribution, using a bifurcation argument that differs slightly from earlier theory. The solutions describe waves with critical layers and an arbitrary number of crests and troughs in each minimal period. An important part of the analysis is a fairly complete description of the local geometry of the so-called kernel equation, and of the small-amplitude solutions. Finally, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the bifurcating solutions.