We present both theoretical description and experimental observation of the modulation instability process and related rogue breathers in the case of stationary periodic background waves, namely cnoidal and dnoidal envelopes. Despite being well-known solutions of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, the stability of such background waves has remained unexplored experimentally until now, unlike the fundamental plane wave. By means of two experimental setups, namely, in nonlinear optics and hydrodynamics, we report on quantitative measurements of spontaneous modulation instability gain seeded by input random noise, as well as the formation of rogue breather solutions induced by a coherent perturbation. Our results confirm the generalization of modulation instability when more complex background waves are involved.
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