Wave motion in water is one of the most striking observable phenomena in nature. Throughout the twentieth century, development of the linearized theory of wave motion in fluids and hydrodynamic stability has been steady and significant. In the last three decades there have been remarkable developments in nonlinear dispersive waves in general, nonlinear water waves in particular, and nonlinear instability phenomena. New solutions are now available for waves modulatedin both space and time, which exhibit new phenomena as diverse as solitons, resonant interactions, side-band instability, and wave-breaking. Other achievements include the discovery of soliton interactions, and the Inverse Scattering Transform method forfinding the explicit exact solution for several canonical nonlinear partial differential equations. This monograph is the first to summarize the research on nonlinear wave phenomena over the past three decades, and it also presents numerous applications in physics, geophysics, and engineering.

Author Biography

Lokenath Debnath is Professor of the Department of Mathematics and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in pure mathematics from the University of Calcutta, and obtained D.I.C. and Ph.D. degrees in applied mathematics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and has had visiting appointments to several universities in the United States and abroad. His many honors and awards include two Senior Fulbright Fellowships and an NSF Scientist award to visit India for lectures and research. Dr. Debnath is author or co-author of several books and research papers in pure and applied mathematics, and serves on several editorial boards for scientific journals. He is the current and founding Managing Editor of the International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences.