Observations on the tanh-coth expansion method for finding solutions to nonlinear evolution equations

The 'tanh-coth expansion method' for finding solitary travelling-wave solutions to nonlinear evolution equations has been used extensively in the literature. It is a natural extension to the basic tanh-function expansion method which was developed in the 1990s. It usually delivers three types of solution, namely a tanh-function expansion, a coth-function expansion, and a tanh-coth expansion. It is known that, for every tanh-function expansion solution, there is a corresponding coth-function expansion solution. It is shown that there is a tanh-coth expansion solution that is merely a disguised version of the coth solution. In many papers, such tanh-coth solutions are erroneously claimed to be 'new'. However, other tanh-coth solutions may be delivered that are genuinely new in the sense that they would not be delivered via the basic tanh-function method. Similar remarks apply to tan, cot and tan-cot expansion solutions

Symbolic computation of exact solutions expressible in hyperbolic and elliptic functions for nonlinear PDEs

Algorithms are presented for the tanh- and sech-methods, which lead to closed-form solutions of nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations (ODEs and PDEs). New algorithms are given to find exact polynomial solutions of ODEs and PDEs in terms of Jacobi's elliptic functions. For systems with parameters, the algorithms determine the conditions on the parameters so that the differential equations admit polynomial solutions in tanh, sech, combinations thereof, Jacobi's sn or cn functions. Examples illustrate key steps of the algorithms. The new algorithms are implemented in Mathematica. The package DDESpecialSolutions.m can be used to automatically compute new special solutions of nonlinear PDEs. Use of the package, implementation issues, scope, limitations, and future extensions of the software are addressed. A survey is given of related algorithms and symbolic software to compute exact solutions of nonlinear differential equations.Comment: 39 pages. Software available from Willy Hereman's home page at http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/whereman

A multiple exp-function method for nonlinear differential equations and its application

A multiple exp-function method to exact multiple wave solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations is proposed. The method is oriented towards ease of use and capability of computer algebra systems, and provides a direct and systematical solution procedure which generalizes Hirota's perturbation scheme. With help of Maple, an application of the approach to the $3+1$ dimensional potential-Yu-Toda-Sasa-Fukuyama equation yields exact explicit 1-wave and 2-wave and 3-wave solutions, which include 1-soliton, 2-soliton and 3-soliton type solutions. Two cases with specific values of the involved parameters are plotted for each of 2-wave and 3-wave solutions.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure