Rigorous Asymptotics of a KdV Soliton Gas
M. Girotti, T. Grava, R. Jenkins, K. D. T.-R. McLaughlin
Abstract
Abstract We analytically study the long time and large space asymptotics of a new broad class of solutions of the KdV equation introduced by Dyachenko, Zakharov, and Zakharov. These solutions are characterized by a Riemann–Hilbert problem which we show arises as the limit $$N\rightarrow + \infty $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mi>∞</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> of a gas of N -solitons. We show that this gas of solitons in the limit $$N\rightarrow \infty $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mi>∞</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> is slowly approaching a cnoidal wave solution for $$x \rightarrow - \infty $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>x</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mi>∞</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> up to terms of order $$\mathcal {O} (1/x)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>O</mml:mi> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mi>x</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , while approaching zero exponentially fast for $$x\rightarrow +\infty $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>x</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mi>∞</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . We establish an asymptotic description of the gas of solitons for large times that is valid over the entire spatial domain, in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions.