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In fluid dynamics and nautical terminology, a breaking wave or breaker is a wave with enough energy to "break" at its peak, reaching a critical level at which linear energy transforms into wave turbulence energy with a distinct forward curve. At this point, simple physical models that describe wave dynamics often become invalid, particularly those that assume linear behaviour.
The most generally familiar sort of breaking wave is the breaking of water surface waves on a coastline. Wave breaking generally occurs where the amplitude reaches the point that the crest of the wave actually overturns. Certain other effects in fluid dynamics have also been termed "breaking waves", partly by analogy with water surface waves. In meteorology, atmospheric gravity waves are said to break when the wave produces regions where the potential temperature decreases with height, leading to energy dissipation through convective instability; likewise, Rossby waves are said to break[1] when the potential vorticity gradient is overturned. Wave breaking also occurs in plasmas,[2] when the particle velocities exceed the wave's phase speed. Another application in plasma physics is plasma expansion into a vacuum, in which the process of wave breaking and the subsequent development of a fast ion peak is described by the Sack-Schamel equation.
A reef or spot of shallow water such as a shoal against which waves break may also be known as a breaker.
- ^ "AGU – American Geophysical Union". AGU.
- ^ Arkhipenko, V.I.; Gusakov, E.Z.; Pisarev, V.A.; Simonchik, L.V. (June 2002). Dynamics of the Plasma Wave Breaking Phenomena (PDF). 29th EPS Conference on Plasma Phys. and Contr. Fusion. Montreux, Switzerland. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 5 November 2022.