On the first bifurcation of solitary waves

Abstract

We consider solitary water waves on the vorticity flow in a two-dimensional channel of finite depth. The main object of study is a branch of solitary waves starting from a laminar flow and then approaching an extreme wave. We prove that there always exists a bifurcation point on such branches. Moreover, the crossing number of the first bifurcation point is 1, i.e. the bifurcation occurs at a simple eigenvalue.