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JOURNALS // Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk // Archive

UFN, 2022 Volume 192, Number 5, Pages 491–506 (Mi ufn7020)

This article is cited in 10 papers

METHODOLOGICAL NOTES

Gerstner waves and their generalizations in hydrodynamics and geophysics

A. A. Abrashkinab, E. N. Pelinovskyabc

a National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod Branch
b Federal Research Center Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod
c Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University n.a. R.E. Alekseev

Abstract: To mark 220 years since the appearance of Gerstner's paper that proposed an exact solution to the hydrodynamic equations, an overview of exact solutions for water waves is given, each of which is a generalization of the Gerstner wave. Additional factors are coastal geometry, fluid rotation, varying pressure on the free surface, stratification, fluid compressibility, and background flows. Waves on a rotating Earth are studied in the $f$-plane approximation, and, in the near-equatorial region, also in the $\beta $-plane approximation. The flows are described in Lagrangian variables. For all waves in the absence of background flows, the trajectories of liquid particles are circles, as in the Gerstner wave (hence, their common name—Gerstner-like).

Keywords: Gerstner waves, Lagrangian coordinates, vorticity, Cauchy invariants, edge waves, Ptolemaic flows, rotating fluid, $f$-plane approximation, equatorially trapped waves.

PACS: 47.35 Bb

Received: February 1, 2021
Revised: April 9, 2021
Accepted: May 3, 2021

DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.2021.05.038980


 English version:
Physics–Uspekhi, 2022, 65:5, 453–467

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