Abstract

Extreme ocean waves, also referred to as freak or rogue waves (RWs), are known to appear without warning and have a disastrous impact on ships and offshore structures as a consequence of the substantially large wave heights they can reach. Studies on RWs have recently attracted the scientific interest due to the interdisciplinary universal nature of the modulation instability (MI) of weakly nonlinear waves as well as for the sake of accurate modeling and prediction of these mysterious extremes. Indeed, solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation provide advanced backbone models that can be used to describe the dynamics of RWs in time and space, providing therefore prototypes for a deterministic investigation of MI. Experiments as well as related numerical simulations on breathers will be presented. Furthermore, the existence of such localized structures in realistic sea state conditions will be discussed as well.  Moreover, experiments on shock waves in shallow water will be also reported.