Almost global large deviations principle for the KdV equation

TL;DR

This paper establishes a large deviations principle for the KdV equation on the torus with random initial data, identifying the main mechanisms for extreme wave formation in a weakly nonlinear, integrable setting.

Contribution

It provides the first large deviations analysis for the KdV equation, revealing that phase quasi-synchronization dominates extreme wave formation in the weakly nonlinear regime.

Findings

Large deviations principle holds for solutions over polynomial timescales.

Extreme waves mainly arise from phase quasi-synchronization rather than resonant energy exchange.

The approach combines Birkhoff normal form analysis with probabilistic methods.

Abstract

We study extreme wave formation for the Korteweg-de Vries equation on the torus with random initial data of average size $\epsilon$. We establish a large deviations principle for the supremum of the solution over arbitrarily long polynomial timescales $t \leq \epsilon^{-n}$ for any fixed natural number $n$. This identifies the leading-order asymptotics of the probability of observing unusually large amplitudes. In this integrable setting, the dynamics evolves on invariant tori where Fourier moduli are almost conserved, ruling out mechanisms for extreme wave formation based on resonant energy exchange. As a result, large amplitudes can only arise through coherent structures or dispersive focusing, which corresponds to the quasi-synchronization of many phases. We show that the latter is dominant in the weakly nonlinear regime. Our approach combines a Birkhoff normal form analysis with probabilistic arguments, exploiting the stability of the integrable dynamics to control the probability of phase quasi-synchronization over long timescales.