Abstract
Despite being rare events, rogue waves have been recorded in the ocean. Here the current knowledge on wave statistics and the probability of occurrence of rogue waves is revisited from an experimental perspective. Starting from the instability of uniform wave packets to side band perturbations, the most accredited generating mechanism, the appearance of rogue waves in random wave fields is discussed. As an initial condition, unidirectional wave propagation is considered. Under these circumstances, wave instability results in a substantial deviation from Gaussian statistics. Directional spreading of wave energy, which characterizes realistic oceanic waves, attenuates the effect of wave instability weakening non-Gaussian properties. It is demonstrated, however, that the interaction between waves and an opposing current can sometimes act as a catalyst for modulational instability. This triggers the formation of rogues waves even in directional sea states, where rogue waves are the least expected.
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Acknowledgements
The experimental work was supported by the European Community’s Sixth Framework Programme through the grant to the budget of the Integrated Infrastructure Initiative HYDROLAB III, Contract no. 022441 (RII3), and the School of Marine Science and Engineering at Plymouth University. The author also acknowledges support from the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the International Science Linkages (ISL) Program of the Australian Academy of Science.
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Appendix
Appendix
The analytical form of the coupling coefficients K ijlm + and K ijlm − of the second order theory are as follows:
where
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Toffoli, A. (2016). Rogue Waves in Random Sea States: An Experimental Perspective. In: Onorato, M., Resitori, S., Baronio, F. (eds) Rogue and Shock Waves in Nonlinear Dispersive Media. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 926. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39214-1_7
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