Slow Damping of Internal Waves in a Stably Stratified Fluid

Published

February 4, 2003

Author(s)

Katharine F. Gurski, R Kollar, R L. Pego

Abstract

We study the damping of internal gravity waves in a stably stratified fluid with constant viscosity in two- and three-dimensional bounded domains. For the linearized Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow with no-slip boundary conditions that model this fluid, we prove there are non-oscillatory normal modes with arbitrarily small exponential decay rates. The proof is very different from that for a horizontally periodic layer and depends on a structure theorem for compact operators which are self-adjoint with respect to an indefinite scalar product in a Hilbert space. We give a complete proof of this theorem, which is closely related to results of Pontrjagin.

Citation

Royal Society of London

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

characteristic values, hydrodynamic stability, Pontrjagin space, variable-density Navier Stokes equations, viscous fluid

Citation

Gurski, K. , Kollar, R. and Pego, R. (2003), Slow Damping of Internal Waves in a Stably Stratified Fluid, Royal Society of London (Accessed October 30, 2025)