Title: Nonlinear stage of Benjamin-Feir instability in forced/damped deep water waves,
Abstract: We study a three-wave truncation of a recently proposed damped/forced
high-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation for deep-water gravity waves under
the effect of wind and viscosity. The evolution of the norm (wave-action) and
spectral mean of the full model are well captured by the reduced dynamics.
Three regimes are found for the wind-viscosity balance: we classify them
according to the attractor in the phase-plane of the truncated system and to
the shift of the spectral mean. A downshift can coexist with both net forcing
and damping, i.e., attraction to period-1 or period-2 solutions. Upshift is
associated with stronger winds, i.e., to a net forcing where the attractor is
always a period-1 solution. The applicability of our classification to
experiments in long wave-tanks is verified.