Instability of Double-Periodic Waves in the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

Abstract

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It is shown how to compute the instability rates for the double-periodic solutions to the cubic NLS (nonlinear Schrödinger) equation by using the Lax linear equations. The wave function modulus of the double-periodic solutions is periodic both in space and time coordinates; such solutions generalize the standing waves which have the time-independent and space-periodic wave function modulus. Similar to other waves in the NLS equation, the double-periodic solutions are spectrally unstable and this instability is related to the bands of the Lax spectrum outside the imaginary axis. A simple numerical method is used to compute the unstable spectrum and to compare the instability rates of the double-periodic solutions with those of the standing periodic waves.

Keywords

• modulational instability
• double-periodic solutions
• Floquet spectrum
• nonlinear Schrödinger equation
• standing waves