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Hysteretic Faraday Waves

We report on the numerical and theoretical study of the subcritical bifurcation of parametrically amplified waves appearing at the interface between two immiscible incompressible fluids when the layer of the lower fluid is very shallow. As a critical control parameter is surpassed, small amplitude surface waves bifurcate towards highly nonlinear ones, with twice their amplitude. We propose a simple phenomenological model which can describe the observed bifurcation. We relate this hysteresis with the change of shear stress using a simple stress balance, in agreement with numerical results.