Citation
Elaskar, Sergio and Sanmartín Losada, Juan Ramón
(2004).
Reduced three-wave model to study the hard transition to chaotic dynamics in Alfven wave-fronts.
"Mecánica computacional", v. XXIII
;
pp. 2461-2476.
ISSN 1666-6070.
Abstract
The derivative nonlinear Schrödinger (DNLS) equation, describing propagation of circularly polarized Alfven waves of finite amplitude in a cold plasma, is truncated to explore the coherent, weakly nonlinear, cubic coupling of three waves near resonance, one wave being linearly unstable and the other waves damped. In a reduced three-wave model (equal damping of daughter waves, three-dimensional flow for two wave amplitudes and one relative
phase), no matter how small the growth rate of the unstable wave there exists a parametric domain with the flow exhibiting chaotic dynamics that is absent for zero growth-rate. This hard transition in phase-space behavior occurs for left-hand (LH) polarized waves, paralelling the known fact that only LH time-harmonic solutions of the DNLS equation are modulationally unstable.