Numerical study of a multiscale expansion of the Korteweg de Vries equation and Painlev\'e-II equation

The Cauchy problem for the Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equation with small dispersion of order \e^2, \e\ll 1, is characterized by the appearance of a zone of rapid modulated oscillations. These oscillations are approximately described by the elliptic solution of KdV where the amplitude, wave-number and frequency are not constant but evolve according to the Whitham equations. Whereas the difference between the KdV and the asymptotic solution decreases as $\epsilon$ in the interior of the Whitham oscillatory zone, it is known to be only of order $\epsilon^{1/3}$ near the leading edge of this zone. To obtain a more accurate description near the leading edge of the oscillatory zone we present a multiscale expansion of the solution of KdV in terms of the Hastings-McLeod solution of the Painlev\'e-II equation. We show numerically that the resulting multiscale solution approximates the KdV solution, in the small dispersion limit, to the order $\epsilon^{2/3}$.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure

Staeckel systems generating coupled KdV hierarchies and their finite-gap and rational solutions

We show how to generate coupled KdV hierarchies from Staeckel separable systems of Benenti type. We further show that solutions of these Staeckel systems generate a large class of finite-gap and rational solutions of cKdV hierarchies. Most of these solutions are new.Comment: 15 page

Classification of integrable two-component Hamiltonian systems of hydrodynamic type in 2+1 dimensions

Hamiltonian systems of hydrodynamic type occur in a wide range of applications including fluid dynamics, the Whitham averaging procedure and the theory of Frobenius manifolds. In 1+1 dimensions, the requirement of the integrability of such systems by the generalised hodograph transform implies that integrable Hamiltonians depend on a certain number of arbitrary functions of two variables. On the contrary, in 2+1 dimensions the requirement of the integrability by the method of hydrodynamic reductions, which is a natural analogue of the generalised hodograph transform in higher dimensions, leads to finite-dimensional moduli spaces of integrable Hamiltonians. In this paper we classify integrable two-component Hamiltonian systems of hydrodynamic type for all existing classes of differential-geometric Poisson brackets in 2D, establishing a parametrisation of integrable Hamiltonians via elliptic/hypergeometric functions. Our approach is based on the Godunov-type representation of Hamiltonian systems, and utilises a novel construction of Godunov's systems in terms of generalised hypergeometric functions.Comment: Latex, 34 page

Hamiltonian structures for general PDEs

We sketch out a new geometric framework to construct Hamiltonian operators for generic, non-evolutionary partial differential equations. Examples on how the formalism works are provided for the KdV equation, Camassa-Holm equation, and Kupershmidt's deformation of a bi-Hamiltonian system.Comment: 12 pages; v2, v3: minor correction