A direct construction of a full family of Whitham solitary waves

Abstract

Starting with the periodic waves earlier constructed for the gravity Whitham equation, we parameterise the solution curves through relative wave height, and use a limiting argument to obtain a full family of solitary waves. The resulting branch starts from the zero solution, traverses unique points in the wave speed–wave height space, and reaches a singular highest wave at. The construction is based on uniform estimates improved from earlier work on periodic waves for the same equation, together with limiting arguments and a Galilean transform to exclude vanishing waves and waves levelling off at negative surface depth. In fact, the periodic waves can be proved to converge locally uniformly to a wave with negative tails, which is then transformed to the desired branch of solutions. The paper also contains some proof concerning uniqueness and continuity for signed solutions (improved touching lemma).