Constructive Study of Modulational Instability in Higher Order Korteweg-de Vries Equations

Abstract

Our present study is devoted to the constructive study of the modulational instability for the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV)-family of equations u t + s u p u x + u x x x (here s = ± 1 and p > 0 is an arbitrary integer). For deducing the conditions of the instability, we first computed the nonlinear corrections to the frequency of the Stokes wave and then explored the coefficients of the corresponding modified nonlinear Schrödinger equations, thus deducing explicit expressions for the instability growth rate, maximum of the increment and the boundaries of the instability interval. A brief discussion of the results, open questions and further research directions completes the paper.