The periodic N breather anomalous wave solution of the Davey–Stewartson equations; first appearance, recurrence, and blow up properties

Abstract

Abstract The integrable focusing Davey–Stewartson (DS) equations, multidimensional generalizations of the focusing cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation, provide ideal mathematical models for describing analytically the dynamics of 2 + 1 dimensional anomalous (rogue) waves (AWs). In this paper (i) we construct the N-breather AW solution of Akhmediev type of the DS1 and DS2 equations, describing the nonlinear interaction of N unstable modes over the constant background solution. (ii) For the simplest multidimensional solution of DS2 we construct its limiting subcases, and we identify the constraint on its arbitrary parameters giving rise to blow up at finite time. (iii) We use matched asymptotic expansions to describe the relevance of the constructed AW solutions in the spatially doubly periodic Cauchy problem of DS2 for small initial perturbations of the background, in the case of one and two unstable modes. We also show, in the case of two unstable modes, that (i) no blow up takes place generically, although the AW amplitude can be arbitrarily large; (ii) the excellent agreement of our formulas, expressed in terms of elementary functions of the initial data, with numerical experiments.