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  Energy conservation in mapped reference frame: Nonlinear Schrodinger equation

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This question might be a bit off topic for this forum. If so, let me know and I will remove it. 

General overview: I am studying surface gravity waves and am mapping reference frames, from a laboratory frame to a so called fetch frame, and am finding that energy is not conserved in the new frame. My question is, is there some form of work in the new reference frame that I am overlooking, that could lead to this discrepancy? Or perhaps I'm missing something else. 

Now the details: This question is about 2 dimensional deep-water irrotational inviscid surface gravity waves, where x is the direction of wave propagation, and z depth. These waves obey the laplacian in the interior, i.e. 

2ϕ=0,

with ϕ the velocity potential. The boundary conditions are 

ηt+ϕxηx=ϕz;ϕt+12(ϕ)2+gz=0;@z=η

with η the free surface displacement. Finally, we have no flow at the bottom, i.e ϕz=0 @z=h with the depth h taken to infinity. There are several integrals of these equations (Whitham 1962, Benjamin and Olver 1982). Let's consider one, namely the energy. It can be shown that 

t(ηh12(ϕ)2 dz+12gη2)+x(ηhϕx(p+12(ϕ)2+gz) dz)=0

Now, due to the complexity in the equations, we consider an asymptotic model, namely, the nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE). This is a weakly nonlinear narrow-banded asymptotic model, and can be derived from the governing equations in a variety of ways. The most straightforward is to take an asymptotic series of (η,ϕ), in the small parameter ϵ=ak, the slope of the waves, i.e. 

η=ˉη+12Nn,m:nmηnmϵneimθ+c.c;ϕ=ˉϕ+12Nn,m:nmϕnmϵneimθemz+c.c.

where θ=xt (we're going to nondimensionalize space by k the wavenumber, time by ω with ω2=gk), and the coefficients ηnm,ϕnm are slow functions of space and time, with overbars representing the phase average of a quantity and c.c. denoting complex conjugate. We let N=3, that is we want to derive equations accurate to order 3 and finally let ϕ11=A. We can now find the other coefficients, as a function of A. Grinding through quite a bit of algebra, one finds

ϕ=ϵ2ˉϕ+12([ϵAizϵ2Ax(116+z22)ϵ3Axx12|A|2A]eiθez+c.c)

η=ϵ3ˉη+12([iϵA+ϵ22Ax+i16ϵ3Axx3i8ϵ3|A|2A]eiθ+[ϵ22A2+iϵ3AAx]e2iθ

3i8ϵ3A3e3iθ+c.c.),

ϵ3ϕz|z=0=ϵ32|A|2x;ϵ3ˉη+ϵ3ˉϕt|z=0=0

ϵ2At+ϵ212Ax+ϵ3i8Axx+ϵ3i2|A|2A=0

The last equation is the nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) for water waves. Now, this equation has an infinite number of conserved integrals. The three of interest here are the simplest:

I1=ϵ2|A|2 dx;I2=iϵ3(AAxAAx)dx;I3=ϵ4|A|412|Ax|2 dx,

where the integrals are taken over all of space (and the wave envelopes A are taken to be compact through this discussion). 

Now, the energy I would like to consider is that corresponding to the phase averaged quantities, and will be defined as 

E=12π2π0(ηh12(ϕ)2 dz+12η2) dθ dx

Putting in the expansions for (ϕ,η) I find 

E=12Io+14I1+18I2

which is exactly conserved. 

Now, for easiest comparison of the predictions of this equation with laboratory experiments, one maps into so called fetch coordinates, given by χ=x, τ=2xt. For fixed x,  τ goes like minus time. 

In these coordinates, the NLSE becomes 

ϵ3(Aχ+iAττ+i|A|2A)=0

and the integrals Io,I1 stay the same (with xτ, and we denote these with a prime) while 

I2I2=ϵ412|A|4|Aτ|2dτ.

However, when I compute the energy in this new reference frame (call it E'), I find (either by transforming E given above, or by transforming (ϕ,η) and then the energy integral)

E=12Io+12I1+14I2+i(AAχAAχ)dτ

This last term is my source of confusion. If one substitutes in the NLSE, then they see E is not conserved. This makes me think that there is some form of work being done in this reference frame that I did not account for, but I have not been able to figure out where it could be coming from. Note, a simple test example is the compact soliton solution A=sech2τeiχ. Clearly, in this example, the energy should be conserved regardless of whether one is considering canonical time evolution equations, or the spatial evolution equations. 

Does anyone have any comments or suggestions? Also, please let me know if something needs to be clarified. 

asked Aug 16, 2015 in Theoretical Physics by Nick Pizzo [ no revision ]
recategorized Aug 16, 2015 by dimension10

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