Infinitely many isolas of modulational instability for Stokes waves

Abstract: We prove the long-standing conjecture regarding the existence of infinitely many high-frequency modulational instability ``isolas" for a Stokes wave in arbitrary depth $ \mathtt{h} > 0 $, subject to longitudinal perturbations. We completely describe the spectral bands with non-zero real part away from the origin of the $L^2(\mathbb{R})$-spectrum of the water waves system linearized at a Stokes waves of small amplitude $ \epsilon > 0 $. The unstable spectrum is the union of isolas of elliptical shape, parameterized by integers $ \mathtt{p}\geq 2 $, with semiaxis of size $ |\beta_1^{(\mathtt{p})} (\mathtt{h})| \epsilon^\mathtt{p}+ O(\epsilon^{\mathtt{p}+1} )$ where $\beta_1^{( \mathtt{p})} (\mathtt{h})$ is a nonzero analytic function of the depth $ \mathtt{h} $ that depends on the Taylor coefficients of the Stokes waves up to order $\mathtt{p}$.