Freely decaying weak turbulence for sea surface gravity waves

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Sep 30;89(14):144501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.144501. Epub 2002 Sep 16.

Abstract

We study the long-time evolution of deep-water ocean surface waves in order to better understand the behavior of the nonlinear interaction processes that need to be accurately predicted in numerical models of wind-generated ocean surface waves. Of particular interest are those nonlinear interactions which are predicted by weak turbulence theory to result in a wave energy spectrum of the form of [k](-2.5). We numerically implement the primitive Euler equations for surface waves and demonstrate agreement between weak turbulence theory and the numerical results.