Coupled stochastic variational principles for multiscale surface gravity waves -- Part I: theoretical framework

Abstract

This paper develops a comprehensive stochastic variational framework for surface gravity waves. Starting from Luke's variational principle for irrotational, incompressible free-surface flow, we introduce a decomposition of the velocity potential into a large-scale deterministic component and a regularized stochastic noise term representing unresolved scales. A path-wise variational principle yields the stochastic counterparts of the Laplace, Bernoulli, and kinematic boundary conditions. To close the system, a second variational principle in expectation is formulated, providing evolution equations for the noise correlation functions. The resulting coupled system preserves the Hamiltonian structure of the Zakharov--Craig--Sulem formulation. We further analyze explicit solutions via WKB approximation and show that the noise correlation functions satisfy a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with ray-tracing dynamics. This framework provides a rigorous foundation for reduced stochastic models of ocean waves and for the kinetic theory developed in the companion paper.