We performed laboratory experiments to study peculiarities of radar scattering of microwave radiation by strongly nonlinear (breaking) gravity-capillary waves on the water surface. It was shown that the scattering from strongly nonlinear waves within the centimeter and, partially, decimeter wavelength range is due to the effects of their “micro-breaking” and the bound (spurious) capillary ripples excited on their profile. The phase velocity of the ripples coincides with the phase velocity of the generating waves. The scattering by meter waves, which at high amplitudes are characterized by strong breaking with tipping of the crest, is determined mainly by the quasi-linear capillary ripples, whose phase velocity is determined by the dispersion relation for free surface waves. In the case of the waves within an intermediate range, which have lengths from several decimeters to one meter, both the spurious and free capillary ripples contribute to the scattering.
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Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Radiofizika, Vol. 55, No. 7, pp. 500–509, July 2012.
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Ermakov, S.A., Kapustin, I.A. & Sergievskaya, I.A. On peculiarities of scattering of microwave radar signals by breaking gravity-capillary waves. Radiophys Quantum El 55, 453–461 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11141-012-9381-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11141-012-9381-1