-----------------------------------------------------------

Applied Math Colloquium

Friday, March 15, 2013, 11:30 AM
Cullimore Lecture Hall, Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology

On the surface signature of internal waves

Walter Craig

McNMaster University

Abstract

Internal waves occur in fluid bodies that are stratified by density, such as in warm and colder layers in a tropical ocean, or fresh and salt water layers in a fjord. The surface manifestation of an internal wave often includes a narrow zone of rough water, a `rip', followed by an extremely calm sea state, the `mill pond effect'. In work with Ph. Guyenne and C. Sulem, we re-examine the analysis of this signature of the presence of an internal soliton, as involving the resonant coupling of the internal and surface modes. It turns out that this phenomenon has a close analogy with quantum radiative absorption and scattering, in the semiclassical limit.