Observable and reproducible rogue waves

In physical regimes described by the cubic, focusing, nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation, the N-dimensional homoclinic orbits of a constant amplitude wave with N unstable modes appear to be good candidates for experimentally observable and reproducible rogue waves. These homoclinic solutions include the Akhmediev breathers (N = 1), which are among the most widely adopted spatially periodic models of rogue waves, and their multi-mode generalizations (N > 1), and will be referred to as multi-mode breathers. Numerical simulations and a linear stability analysis indicate that the breathers with a maximal number of modes (maximal breathers) are robust with respect to rather general perturbations of the initial data in a neighborhood of the unstable background.