This book unifies the dynamical systems and functional analysis approaches to the linear and nonlinear stability of waves. It synthesizes fundamental ideas of the past 20+ years of research, carefully balancing theory and application. The book isolates and methodically develops key ideas by working through illustrative examples that are subsequently synthesized into general principles. Many of the seminal examples of stability theory, including orbital stability of the KdV solitary wave, and asymptotic stability of viscous shocks for scalar conservation laws, are treated in a textbook fashion for the first time. It presents spectral theory from a dynamical systems and functional analytic point of view, including essential and absolute spectra, and develops general nonlinear stability results for dissipative and Hamiltonian systems. The structure of the linear eigenvalue problem for Hamiltonian systems is carefully developed, including the Krein signature and related stability indices. The Evans function for the detection of point spectra is carefully developed through a series of frameworks of increasing complexity. Applications of the Evans function to the Orientation index, edge bifurcations, and large domain limits are developed through illustrative examples. The book is intended for first or second year graduate students in mathematics, or those with equivalent mathematical maturity. It is highly illustrated and there are many exercises scattered throughout the text that highlight and emphasize the key concepts. Upon completion of the book, the reader will be in an excellent position to understand and contribute to current research in nonlinear stability.

This book is a unique selection of work by world-class experts exploring the latest developments in Hamiltonian partial differential equations and their applications. Topics covered within are representative of the field’s wide scope, including KAM and normal form theories, perturbation and variational methods, integrable systems, stability of nonlinear solutions as well as applications to cosmology, fluid mechanics and water waves. The volume contains both surveys and original research papers and gives a concise overview of the above topics, with results ranging from mathematical modeling to rigorous analysis and numerical simulation. It will be of particular interest to graduate students as well as researchers in mathematics and physics, who wish to learn more about the powerful and elegant analytical techniques for Hamiltonian partial differential equations.

Nonlinear waves are of significant scientific interest across many diverse contexts, ranging from mathematics and physics to engineering, biosciences, chemistry, and finance. The study of nonlinear waves is relevant to Bose-Einstein condensates, the interaction of electromagnetic waves with matter, optical fibers and waveguides, acoustics, water waves, atmospheric and planetary scales, and even galaxy formation. The aim of this book is to provide a self-contained introduction to the continuously developing field of nonlinear waves, that offers the background, the basic ideas, and mathematical, as well as computational methods, while also presenting an overview of associated physical applications. Originated from the authors' own research activity in the field for almost three decades and shaped over many years of teaching on relevant courses, the primary purpose of this book is to serve as a textbook. However, the selection and exposition of the material will be useful to anyone who is curious to explore the fascinating world of nonlinear waves.

Wave phenomena are ubiquitous in nature. Their mathematical modeling, simulation and analysis lead to fascinating and challenging problems in both analysis and numerical mathematics. These challenges and their impact on significant applications have inspired major results and methods about wave-type equations in both fields of mathematics. The Conference on Mathematics of Wave Phenomena 2018 held in Karlsruhe, Germany, was devoted to these topics and attracted internationally renowned experts from a broad range of fields. These conference proceedings present new ideas, results, and techniques from this exciting research area.

The outcome of a conference held in East Carolina University in June 1982, this book provides an account of developments in the theory and application of nonlinear waves in both fluids and plasmas. Twenty-two contributors from eight countries here cover all the main fields of research, including nonlinear water waves, K-dV equations, solitions and inverse scattering transforms, stability of solitary waves, resonant wave interactions, nonlinear evolution equations, nonlinear wave phenomena in plasmas, recurrence phenomena in nonlinear wave systems, and the structure and dynamics of envelope solitions in plasmas.

This book offers a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art theoretical and experimental advances in linear and nonlinear parity-time-symmetric systems in various physical disciplines, and surveys the emerging applications of parity-time (PT) symmetry. PT symmetry originates from quantum mechanics, where if the Schrodinger operator satisfies the PT symmetry, then its spectrum can be all real. This concept was later introduced into optics, Bose-Einstein condensates, metamaterials, electric circuits, acoustics, mechanical systems and many other fields, where a judicious balancing of gain and loss constitutes a PT-symmetric system. Even though these systems are dissipative, they exhibit many signature properties of conservative systems, which make them mathematically and physically intriguing. Important PT-symmetry applications have also emerged. This book describes the latest advances of PT symmetry in a wide range of physical areas, with contributions from the leading experts. It is intended for researchers and graduate students to enter this research frontier, or use it as a reference book.

Introduction to Traveling Waves is an invitation to research focused on traveling waves for undergraduate and masters level students. Traveling waves are not typically covered in the undergraduate curriculum, and topics related to traveling waves are usually only covered in research papers, except for a few texts designed for students. This book includes techniques that are not covered in those texts. Through their experience involving undergraduate and graduate students in a research topic related to traveling waves, the authors found that the main difficulty is to provide reading materials that contain the background information sufficient to start a research project without an expectation of an extensive list of prerequisites beyond regular undergraduate coursework. This book meets that need and serves as an entry point into research topics about the existence and stability of traveling waves. Features Self-contained, step-by-step introduction to nonlinear waves written assuming minimal prerequisites, such as an undergraduate course on linear algebra and differential equations. Suitable as a textbook for a special topics course, or as supplementary reading for courses on modeling. Contains numerous examples to support the theoretical material. Supplementary MATLAB codes available via GitHub.