Investigating overtaking collisions of solitary waves in the Schamel equation

This article presents a numerical investigation of overtaking collisions between two solitary waves in the context of the Schamel equation. Our study reveals different regimes characterized by the behavior of the wave interactions. In certain regimes, the collisions maintain two well-separated crests consistently over time, while in other regimes, the number of local maxima undergoes variations following the patterns of $2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2$ or $2\rightarrow 1\rightarrow 2$. These findings demonstrate that the geometric Lax-categorization observed in the Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV) for two-soliton collisions remains applicable to the Schamel equation. However, in contrast to the KdV, we demonstrate that an algebraic Lax-categorization based on the ratio of the initial solitary wave amplitudes is not feasible for the Schamel equation. Additionally, we show that the statistical moments for two-solitary wave collisions are qualitatively similar to the KdV equation and the phase shifts after soliton interactions are close to ones in integrable KdV and modified KdV models

Steady transcritical flow over an obstacle: Parametric map of solutions of the forced extended Korteweg-de Vries equation

Transcritical flow of a stratified fluid over an obstacle is often modeled by the forced Korteweg-de Vries equation, which describes a balance among weak nonlinearity, weak dispersion, and small forcing effects. However, in some special circumstances, it is necessary to add an additional cubic nonlinear term, so that the relevant model is the forced extended Korteweg-de Vries equation. Here we seek steady solutions with constant, but different amplitudes upstream and downstream of the forcing region. Our main interest is in the case when the forcing has negative polarity, which represents a hole. The effects of the width of the hole and the amplitude of the hole on these steady solutions are then investigated. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Interactions of solitons with an external force field: Exploring the Schamel equation framework

This study aims to investigate the interactions of solitons with an external force within the framework of the Schamel equation, both asymptotically and numerically. By utilizing asymptotic expansions, we demonstrate that the soliton interaction can be approximated by a dynamical system that involves the soliton amplitude and its crest position. To solve the Schamel equation, we employ a pseudospectral method and compare the obtained results with those predicted by the asymptotic theory. Remarkably, our findings reveal a qualitatively agreement between the predictions and the numerical simulations at early times. Specifically, we classify the soliton interaction into three categories: (i) steady interaction occurs when the crest of the soliton and the crest of the external force are in phase, (ii) oscillatory behavior arises when the soliton's speed and the external force speed are close to resonance, causing the soliton to bounce back and forth near its initial position, and (iii) non-reversible motion occurs when the soliton moves away from its initial position without changing its direction

Nonlinear Lattice Dynamics of Bose-Einstein Condensates

The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) model, which was proposed 50 years ago to examine thermalization in non-metallic solids and develop ``experimental'' techniques for studying nonlinear problems, continues to yield a wealth of results in the theory and applications of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems with many degrees of freedom. Inspired by the studies of this seminal model, solitary-wave dynamics in lattice dynamical systems have proven vitally important in a diverse range of physical problems--including energy relaxation in solids, denaturation of the DNA double strand, self-trapping of light in arrays of optical waveguides, and Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in optical lattices. BECS, in particular, due to their widely ranging and easily manipulated dynamical apparatuses--with one to three spatial dimensions, positive-to-negative tuning of the nonlinearity, one to multiple components, and numerous experimentally accessible external trapping potentials--provide one of the most fertile grounds for the analysis of solitary waves and their interactions. In this paper, we review recent research on BECs in the presence of deep periodic potentials, which can be reduced to nonlinear chains in appropriate circumstances. These reductions, in turn, exhibit many of the remarkable nonlinear structures (including solitons, intrinsic localized modes, and vortices) that lie at the heart of the nonlinear science research seeded by the FPU paradigm.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, two-columns, 3 figs, accepted fpr publication in Chaos's focus issue on the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem; minor clarifications (and a couple corrected typos) from previous versio

Long nonlinear internal waves

Author Posting. © Annual Reviews, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 38 (2006): 395-425, doi:10.1146/annurev.fluid.38.050304.092129.Over the past four decades, the combination of in situ and remote sensing observations has demonstrated that long nonlinear internal solitary-like waves are ubiquitous features of coastal oceans. The following provides an overview of the properties of steady internal solitary waves and the transient processes of wave generation and evolution, primarily from the point of view of weakly nonlinear theory, of which the Korteweg-de Vries equation is the most frequently used example. However, the oceanographically important processes of wave instability and breaking, generally inaccessible with these models, are also discussed. Furthermore, observations often show strongly nonlinear waves whose properties can only be explained with fully nonlinear models.KRH acknowledges support from NSF and ONR and an Independent Study Award from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. WKM acknowledges support from NSF and ONR, which has made his work in this area possible, in close collaboration with former graduate students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and MIT

Solitary wave interactions with a periodic forcing: the extended Korteweg-de Vries framework

The aim of this work is to study numerically the interaction of large amplitude solitary waves with an external periodic forcing using the forced extended Korteweg-de Vries equation (feKdV). Regarding these interactions, we find that a solitary wave can bounce back and forth remaining close to its initial position when the forcing and the solitary wave are near resonant or it can move away from its initial position without reversing their direction. Additionally, we verify that the numerical results agree well within the asymptotic approximation for broad the forcings

Soliton interactions with an external forcing: the modified Korteweg-de Vries framework

The aim of this work is to study asymptotically and numerically the interaction of solitons with an external forcing with variable speed using the forced modified Korteweg-de Vries equation (mKdV). We show that the asymptotic predictions agree well with numerical solutions for forcing with constant speed and linear variable speed. Regarding forcing with linear variable speed, we find regimes in which the solitons are trapped at the external forcing and its amplitude increases or decreases in time depending on whether the forcing accelerates or decelerates