https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2010-01253-8
Regular article
Could rogue waves be used as efficient weapons against enemy ships?
1 Optical Sciences Group, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Institute of Advanced Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
2 Instituto de Óptica, C.S.I.C., Serrano 121, 28006 Madrid, Spain
The title of this paper is more provocative than serious, since its aim, in this special issue of EPJ, is mainly to heat up discussions and debates on the topic of rogue waves. Our goal is to reach a better understanding of the phenomenon, rather than to use it as a destructive tool. It is clear from previous studies that rogue waves are formed due to at least two mechanisms of amplification, rather than in a single stage. The first mechanism is modulation instability and Akhmediev breathers while the second one is multiple soliton collisions. In this short article, we consider soliton collisions with energy exchange as one of the important mechanisms of nonlinear amplification that can irreversibly lead to the creation of giant waves that we can call “rogue waves”.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2010
