A gauge theory for shallow water
David Tong
Abstract
The shallow water equations describe the horizontal flow of a thin layer of fluid with varying height. We show that the equations can be rewritten as a d=2+1 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> dimensional Abelian gauge theory. The magnetic field corresponds to the conserved height of the fluid, while the electric charge corresponds to the conserved vorticity. In a certain linearised approximation, the shallow water equations reduce to relativistic Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. This describes Poincaré waves. The chiral edge modes of the theory are identified as coastal Kelvin waves.