"Scars" in parametrically excited surface waves

Abstract

We consider the Faraday surface waves of a fluid in a container with a non-integrable boundary shape. We show that, at sufficiently low frequencies, the wave patterns are ``scars'' selected by the instability of the corresponding periodic orbits, the dissipation at the container side walls, and interaction effects which reflect the nonlinear nature of the Faraday waves. The results explain the observation of a limited number of scars with anomalous strengths in recent experiments by Kudrolli, Abraham and Gollub.