The main characteristic of this classic exposition of the inverse scattering method and its applications to soliton theory is its consistent Hamiltonian approach to the theory. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation is considered as a main example, forming the first part of the book. The second part examines such fundamental models as the sine-Gordon equation and the Heisenberg equation, the classification of integrable models and methods for constructing their solutions.

A coherent introduction to the complete range of soliton theory including Hirota's method and Backlund transformations. Details physical applications of soliton theory with chapters on the peculiar wave patterns of the Andaman Sea, atmospheric phenomena, general relativity and Davydov solitons. Contains testing for full integrability, a discussion of the Painlevé technique, symmetries and conservation law.

The theory of soliton equations and integrable systems has developed rapidly during the last 30 years with numerous applications in mechanics and physics. For a long time, books in this field have not been written but the flood of papers was overwhelming: many hundreds, maybe thousands of them. All this output followed one single work by Gardner, Green, Kruskal, and Mizura on the Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV), which had seemed to be merely an unassuming equation of mathematical physics describing waves in shallow water.Besides its obvious practical use, this theory is attractive also because it satisfies the aesthetic need in a beautiful formula which is so inherent to mathematics.The second edition is up-to-date and differs from the first one considerably. One third of the book (five chapters) is completely new and the rest is refreshed and edited.

The theory of soliton equations and integrable systems has developed rapidly during the last 20 years with numerous applications in mechanics and physics. For a long time books in this field have not been written but the flood of papers was overwhelming: many hundreds, maybe thousands of them. All this followed one single work by Gardner, Greene, Kruskal, and Miura about the Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV) which, had seemed to be merely an unassuming equation of mathematical physics describing waves in shallow water.

The theory of soliton equations and integrable systems has developed rapidly during the last 20 years with numerous applications in mechanics and physics. For a long time books in this field have not been written but the flood of papers was overwhelming: many hundreds, maybe thousands of them. All this followed one single work by Gardner, Greene, Kruskal, and Miura about the Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV) which, had seemed to be merely an unassuming equation of mathematical physics describing waves in shallow water. This branch of science is attractive because it is one of those which revives the interest in the basic principles of mathematics, a beautiful formula.

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.