Acoustic mode coupling induced by nonlinear internal waves: evaluation of the mode coupling matrices and applications

This paper applies the mode coupling equation to calculate the mode-coupling matrix for nonlinear internal waves appearing as a train of solitons. The calculation is applied to an individual soliton up to second order expansion in sound speed perturbation in the Dyson series. The expansion is valid so long as the fractional sound speed change due to a single soliton, integrated over range and depth, times the wavenumber is smaller than unity. Scattering between the solitons are included by coupling the mode coupling matrices between the solitons. Acoustic fields calculated using this mode-coupling matrix formulation are compared with that obtained using a parabolic equation (PE) code. The results agree very well in terms of the depth integrated acoustic energy at the receivers for moving solitary internal waves. The advantages of using the proposed approach are: (1) The effects of mode coupling can be studied as a function of range and time as the solitons travel along the propagation path, and (2) it allows speedy calculations of sound propagation through a packet or packets of solitons saving orders of magnitude computations compared with the PE code. The mode coupling theory is applied to at-sea data to illustrate the underlying physics.