Account of method of solving soliton equations by the inventor of the method.

The modern version of the bilinear, or Hirota's direct, method is described here using relatively simple mathematics. As the only account in book form of the modern form of the theory, it will be essential reading for all those working in soliton theory.

With contributions by numerous experts

Proceedings of the NSF Research Workshop on Contact Transformations, Held in Nashville, Tennessee, 1974

In the 25 years of its existence Soliton Theory has drastically expanded our understanding of “integrability” and contributed a lot to the reunification of Mathematics and Physics in the range from deep algebraic geometry and modern representation theory to quantum field theory and optical transmission lines.The book is a systematic introduction to the Soliton Theory with an emphasis on its background and algebraic aspects. It is the first one devoted to the general matrix soliton equations, which are of great importance for the foundations and the applications.Differential algebra (local conservation laws, Bäcklund-Darboux transforms), algebraic geometry (theta and Baker functions), and the inverse scattering method (Riemann-Hilbert problem) with well-grounded preliminaries are applied to various equations including principal chiral fields, Heisenberg magnets, Sin-Gordon, and Nonlinear Schrödinger equation.

"Partial Differential Equations and Solitary Waves Theory" is a self-contained book divided into two parts: Part I is a coherent survey bringing together newly developed methods for solving PDEs. While some traditional techniques are presented, this part does not require thorough understanding of abstract theories or compact concepts. Well-selected worked examples and exercises shall guide the reader through the text. Part II provides an extensive exposition of the solitary waves theory. This part handles nonlinear evolution equations by methods such as Hirota’s bilinear method or the tanh-coth method. A self-contained treatment is presented to discuss complete integrability of a wide class of nonlinear equations. This part presents in an accessible manner a systematic presentation of solitons, multi-soliton solutions, kinks, peakons, cuspons, and compactons. While the whole book can be used as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in applied mathematics, physics and engineering, Part II will be most useful for graduate students and researchers in mathematics, engineering, and other related fields. Dr. Abdul-Majid Wazwaz is a Professor of Mathematics at Saint Xavier University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.