Amplitude measurements of Faraday waves

A light reflection technique is used to measure quantitatively the surface elevation of Faraday waves. The performed measurements cover a wide parameter range of driving frequencies and sample viscosities. In the capillary wave regime the bifurcation diagrams exhibit a frequency independent scaling proportional to the wavelength. We also provide numerical simulations of the full Navier-Stokes equations, which are in quantitative agreement up to supercritical drive amplitudes of $\varepsilon \simeq 20\%.$ The validity of an existing perturbation analysis is found to be limited to $\varepsilon <2.5\%.\mathrm{}$