Published in the Research School of Physics Event Horizon
Vol44 Issue20 20–24 May 2019
Congratulations to Adrian Ankiewicz, Optical Sciences Group, RSPE, for the atricle in Physical Review journal.
Rogue waves in the deep ocean can sink ships and cause fatalities and widespread damage to other marine vessels. Such rare events can be mathematically explained by the Nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Among all reported rogue waves, just over 10 percent occur in deep water, while more than 88 percent are reported near coasts and in relatively shallow water. Much effort has been expended by scientists to explain these phenomena, however, till now, none of them have been quite successful. Scientists in the Research School of Physics & Engineering at the Australian National University, Canberra, propose new types of such rogue waves by allowing for complex-valued solutions for the 'KdV ' equation. This can model waves in shallow water. In fact, the relative heights of these new waveforms can be much greater than those of the corresponding deep water rogue waves. They can thus pose a considerable threat to shipping and to people on beaches.
See https://journals.aps.org/pre/accepted/9e07aY98O691276b50634a344f6bc6e794ab37eeb for further details.