An operator expansion method for computing nonlinear surface waves on a ferrofluid jet

We present a new numerical method to simulate the time evolution of axisymmetric nonlinear waves on the surface of a ferrofluid jet. It is based on the reduction of this problem to a lower-dimensional computation involving surface variables alone. To do so, we describe the associated Dirichlet–Neumann operator in terms of a Taylor series expansion where each term can be efficiently computed by a pseudo-spectral scheme using the fast Fourier transform. We show detailed numerical tests on the convergence of this operator and, to illustrate the performance of our method, we simulate the long-time propagation and pairwise collisions of axisymmetric solitary waves. Both depression and elevation waves are examined by varying the magnetic field. Comparisons with weakly nonlinear predictions are also provided.