A Look at Some Remarkable Mathematical Techniques

Abstract

The nonlinear equations that we have encountered in the previous chapters can be solved by using mathematical techniques such as the powerful inverse scattering transform (IST) (Gardner et al. 1967) and the remarkable Hirota method (Hirota 1971). Specifically, in addition to the one-soliton solutions, explicit multisoliton solutions representing the interaction of any number of solitons can be constructed. Moreover, in several cases a precise prediction, closely related to experiments, can be made by the IST of the nonlinear response of the physical system, that is, of the number of solitons that can emerge from a finite initial disturbance (Zakharov, 1980. Ablowitz and Segur 1981; Calogero and Degasperis 1981; Newell 1985).