Weakly nonlinear analysis of impulsively-forced Faraday waves

Parametrically-excited surface waves, forced by a repeating sequence of N delta-function impulses, are considered within the framework of the Zhang-Viñals model [ W. Zhang and J. Viñals J. Fluid Mech. 336 301 (1997)]. With impulsive forcing, the linear stability analysis can be carried out exactly and leads to an implicit equation for the neutral stability curves. As noted previously [ J. Bechhoefer and B. Johnson Am. J. Phys. 64 1482 (1996)], in the simplest case of N=2 equally-spaced impulses per period (which alternate up and down) there are only subharmonic modes of instability. The familiar situation of alternating subharmonic and harmonic resonance tongues emerges only if an asymmetry in the spacing between the impulses is introduced. We extend the linear analysis for N=2 impulses per period to the weakly nonlinear regime, where we determine the leading order nonlinear saturation of one-dimensional standing waves as a function of forcing strength. Specifically, an analytic expression for the cubic Landau coefficient in the bifurcation equation is derived as a function of the dimensionless spacing between the two impulses and the fluid parameters that appear in the Zhang-Viñals model. As the capillary parameter is varied, one finds a parameter regime of wave amplitude suppression, which is due to a familiar 1:2 spatiotemporal resonance between the subharmonic mode of instability and a damped harmonic mode. This resonance occurs for impulsive forcing even when harmonic resonance tongues are absent from the neutral stability curves. The strength of this resonance feature can be tuned by varying the spacing between the impulses. This finding is interpreted in terms of a recent symmetry-based analysis of multifrequency forced Faraday waves [ J. Porter, C. M. Topaz and M. Silber Phys. Lett. 93 034502 (2004); C. M. Topaz, J. Porter and M. Silber Phys. Rev. E 70 066206 (2004)].