Nonlinear phenomena at the surface of liquid hydrogen

Leonid P. Mezhov-Deglin^*, Alexandr A. Levchenko,
Maxim Yu. Brazhnikov, and German V. Kolmakov

The results of our recent investigations of the nonlinear phenomena at the charged surface of liquid hydrogen are reported. The reconstruction of the equipotentially charged flat surface is observed resulting in creation of a solitary wave (a hump) at voltages above some critical value. It is demonstrated that excitation of the charged surface by ac electric field at low frequencies results in the turbulent mode in a system of capillary waves. In accordance with the theory of weak wave turbulence the pair correlation function of the surface deviations can be described by the exponential function w^m. The exponent m changes in magnitude from m = - 3.7 ± 0.3 to - 2.8 ± 0.2 when the pumping at a single resonant frequency changes to a broadband noise excitation. Measurements are made of the dependence of the boundary frequency w_b of the upper edge of the inertial range in which the Kolmogorov spectrum is formed on the wave amplitude h_p at the pumping frequency w_p. It is shown that the obtained data can be well described by a function of the form w_b ∞ h_p ^4/3 w_p^23/9.

PACS: 68.03.Kn; 47.35.+i; 47.27.Gs