It is known that an "explosive instability" can occur when nonlinear waves propagate in certain media that admit 3-wave mixing. In that context, three resonantly interacting wavetrains all gain energy from a background source, and all blow up together, in finite time. A recent paper [17] showed that explosive instabilities can occur even in media that admit no 3-wave mixing. Instead, the instability is caused by 4-wave mixing, and results in four resonantly interacting wavetrains all blowing up in finite time. In both cases, the instability occurs in systems with no dissipation. This paper reviews the earlier work, and shows that adding a common form of dissipation to the system, with either 3-wave or 4-wave mixing, provides an effective threshold for blow-up. Only initial data that exceed the respective thresholds blow up in finite time.
Finite time blowing-up for the Yang-Mills gradient flow in higher dimensions