Chiral Solitons in Generalized Korteweg-de Vries Equations

Generalizations of the Korteweg-de Vries equation are considered, and some explicit solutions are presented. There are situations where solutions engender the interesting property of being chiral, that is, of having velocity determined in terms of the parameters that define the generalized equation, with a definite sign.Comment: 9 pages, latex, no figures. References added, typos correcte

Gaussian solitary waves and compactons in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam lattices with Hertzian potentials

We consider a class of fully-nonlinear Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattices, consisting of a chain of particles coupled by fractional power nonlinearities of order $\alpha >1$. This class of systems incorporates a classical Hertzian model describing acoustic wave propagation in chains of touching beads in the absence of precompression. We analyze the propagation of localized waves when $\alpha$ is close to unity. Solutions varying slowly in space and time are searched with an appropriate scaling, and two asymptotic models of the chain of particles are derived consistently. The first one is a logarithmic KdV equation, and possesses linearly orbitally stable Gaussian solitary wave solutions. The second model consists of a generalized KdV equation with H\"older-continuous fractional power nonlinearity and admits compacton solutions, i.e. solitary waves with compact support. When $\alpha \rightarrow 1^+$, we numerically establish the asymptotically Gaussian shape of exact FPU solitary waves with near-sonic speed, and analytically check the pointwise convergence of compactons towards the limiting Gaussian profile

Long-Time Dynamics of Variable Coefficient mKdV Solitary Waves

We study the Korteweg-de Vries-type equation dt u=-dx(dx^2 u+f(u)-B(t,x)u), where B is a small and bounded, slowly varying function and f is a nonlinearity. Many variable coefficient KdV-type equations can be rescaled into this equation. We study the long time behaviour of solutions with initial conditions close to a stable, B=0 solitary wave. We prove that for long time intervals, such solutions have the form of the solitary wave, whose centre and scale evolve according to a certain dynamical law involving the function B(t,x), plus an H^1-small fluctuation.Comment: 19 page

Modulational Instability in Equations of KdV Type

It is a matter of experience that nonlinear waves in dispersive media, propagating primarily in one direction, may appear periodic in small space and time scales, but their characteristics --- amplitude, phase, wave number, etc. --- slowly vary in large space and time scales. In the 1970's, Whitham developed an asymptotic (WKB) method to study the effects of small "modulations" on nonlinear periodic wave trains. Since then, there has been a great deal of work aiming at rigorously justifying the predictions from Whitham's formal theory. We discuss recent advances in the mathematical understanding of the dynamics, in particular, the instability of slowly modulated wave trains for nonlinear dispersive equations of KdV type.Comment: 40 pages. To appear in upcoming title in Lecture Notes in Physic

Asymptotics, frequency modulation, and low regularity ill-posedness for canonical defocusing equations

In a recent paper, Kenig, Ponce and Vega study the low regularity behavior of the focusing nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS), focusing modified Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV), and complex Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equations. Using soliton and breather solutions, they demonstrate the lack of local well-posedness for these equations below their respective endpoint regularities. In this paper, we study the defocusing analogues of these equations, namely defocusing NLS, defocusing mKdV, and real KdV, all in one spatial dimension, for which suitable soliton and breather solutions are unavailable. We construct for each of these equations classes of modified scattering solutions, which exist globally in time, and are asymptotic to solutions of the corresponding linear equations up to explicit phase shifts. These solutions are used to demonstrate lack of local well-posedness in certain Sobolev spaces,in the sense that the dependence of solutions upon initial data fails to be uniformly continuous. In particular, we show that the mKdV flow is not uniformly continuous in the $L^2$ topology, despite the existence of global weak solutions at this regularity. Finally, we investigate the KdV equation at the endpoint regularity $H^{-3/4}$, and construct solutions for both the real and complex KdV equations. The construction provides a nontrivial time interval $[-T,T]$ and a locally Lipschitz continuous map taking the initial data in $H^{-3/4}$ to a distributional solution $u \in C^0 ([-T,T];$H^{-3/4})$ which is uniquely defined for all smooth data. The proof uses a generalized Miura transform to transfer the existing endpoint regularity theory for mKdV to KdV.Comment: minor edit