Effect of a small loss or gain in the periodic nonlinear Schrödinger anomalous wave dynamics

The focusing nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation is the simplest universal model describing the modulation instability of quasimonochromatic waves in weakly nonlinear media, the main physical mechanism for the appearance of anomalous (rogue) waves (AWs) in nature. In this paper, concentrating on the simplest case of a single unstable mode, we study the special Cauchy problem for the NLS equation perturbed by a linear loss or gain term, corresponding to periodic initial perturbations of the unstable background solution of the NLS. Using the finite gap method and the theory of perturbations of soliton partial differential equations, we construct the proper analytic model describing quantitatively how the solution evolves after a suitable transient into slowly varying lower dimensional patterns (attractors) on the (x,t) plane, characterized by ΔX=L/2 in the case of loss and by ΔX=0 in the case of gain, where ΔX is the x shift of the position of the AW during the recurrence, and L is the period. This process is described, to leading order, in terms of elementary functions of the initial data. Since dissipation can hardly be avoided in all natural phenomena involving AWs, and since a small dissipation induces O(1) effects on the periodic AW dynamics, generating the slowly varying loss or gain attractors analytically described in this paper, we expect that these attractors together with their generalizations corresponding to more unstable modes will play a basic role in the theory of periodic AWs in nature.