For length scales of a few cm or less, where both gravity and surface tension are important, a rich variety of locally confined nonlinear waves of permanent form can propagate on the surface of shallow and deep water. Such gravity-capillary solitary waves (in one dimension) and lumps (in two dimensions) have been studied extensively in the last two decades theoretically, by analytical and numerical techniques, as well as in laboratory experiments. This body of work will be surveyed and open questions for future work will be highlighted.
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