Exciting rogue waves

Rogue waves [1]—extreme ocean waves with heights up to thirty meters—have been common elements in stories from people working at sea, as well as in popular fiction. It is not hard to imagine why: being on a small boat in a stormy sea swell and suddenly encountering a wave maybe three times as high as the surrounding waves is a terrifying experience (Fig. 1). However, up to a few decades ago, oceanographers mainly investigated the surface of the sea using linear models and these models could not account for the numerous occurrences of rogue waves reported by seafarers and ocean workers. In fact, it was not until 1995 that the first proper measurement of a rogue wave was made. Yet the conditions that cause such waves to grow enormously in size are not well understood. Recent results reported in Physical Review A by Nail Akhmediev and Adrian Ankiewicz of the Australian National University and Jose Soto-Crespo of Instituto de Óptica, Madrid, Spain [2], answer some of these questions and could also increase our understanding of how to produce high-intensity electromagnetic pulses in optical media.