The semi-analytic theory and computation of finite-depth standing water waves

We propose a semi-analytic Stokes expansion ansatz for finite-depth standing water waves and devise a recursive algorithm to solve the system of differential equations governing the expansion coefficients. We implement the algorithm on a supercomputer using arbitrary-precision arithmetic. The Stokes expansion introduces hyperbolic trigonometric terms that require exponentiation of power series. We handle this efficiently using Bell polynomials. Under mild assumptions on the fluid depth, we prove that there are no exact resonances, though small divisors may occur. Sudden changes in growth rate in the expansion coefficients are found to correspond to imperfect bifurcations observed when families of standing waves are computed using a shooting method. A direct connection between small divisors in the recursive algorithm and imperfect bifurcations in the solution curves is observed, where the small divisor excites higher-frequency parasitic standing waves that oscillate on top of the main wave. A 109th order Pad\'e approximation maintains 25--30 digits of accuracy on both sides of the first imperfect bifurcation encountered for the unit-depth problem. This suggests that even if the Stokes expansion is divergent, there may be a closely related convergent sequence of rational approximations.