On the time scales of spectral evolution of nonlinear waves

Abstract

As presented in Annenkov & Shrira (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 102, 2009, 024502), when a surface gravity wave field is subjected to an abrupt perturbation of external forcing, its spectrum evolves on a ‘fast’ dynamic time scale of $O(\varepsilon ^{-2})$ , with $\varepsilon$ a measure of wave steepness. This observation poses a challenge to wave turbulence theory that predicts an evolution with a kinetic time scale of $O(\varepsilon ^{-4})$ . We revisit this unresolved problem by studying the same situation in the context of a one-dimensional Majda–McLaughlin–Tabak equation with gravity wave dispersion relation. Our results show that the kinetic and dynamic time scales can both be realised, with the former and latter occurring for weaker and stronger forcing perturbations, respectively. The transition between the two regimes corresponds to a critical forcing perturbation, with which the spectral evolution time scale drops to the same order as the linear wave period (of some representative mode). Such fast spectral evolution is mainly induced by a far-from-stationary state after a sufficiently strong forcing perturbation is applied. We further develop a set-based interaction analysis to show that the inertial-range modal evolution in the studied cases is dominated by their (mostly non-local) interactions with the low-wavenumber ‘condensate’ induced by the forcing perturbation. The results obtained in this work should be considered to provide significant insight into the original gravity wave problem.