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.

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.

A discussion of the soliton, focusing on the properties that make it physically ubiquitous and the soliton equation mathematically miraculous.

In the last ten to fifteen years there have been many important developments in the theory of integrable equations. This period is marked in particular by the strong impact of soliton theory in many diverse areas of mathematics and physics; for example, algebraic geometry (the solution of the Schottky problem), group theory (the discovery of quantum groups), topology (the connection of Jones polynomials with integrable models), and quantum gravity (the connection of the KdV with matrix models). This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of these developments. Numbered among the authors are many of the most prominent researchers in the field.

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 book presents a detailed derivation of the spectral properties of the Recursion Operators allowing one to derive all the fundamental properties of the soliton equations and to study their hierarchies.

This textbook is an introduction to the theory of solitons in the physical sciences.

Soliton theory as a method for solving some classes of nonlinear evolution equations (soliton equations) is one of the most actively developing topics in mathematical physics. This book presents some spectral theory methods for the investigation of soliton equations ad the inverse scattering problems related to these equations. The authors give the theory of expansions for the Sturm-Liouville operator and the Dirac operator. On this basis, the spectral theory of recursion operators generating Korteweg-de Vries type equations is presented and the Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur scheme, through which the inverse scattering method could be understood as a Fourier-type transformation, is considered. Following these ideas, the authors investigate some of the questions related to inverse spectral problems, i.e. uniqueness theorems, construction of explicit solutions and approximative methods for solving inverse scattering problems. A rigorous investigation of the stability of soliton solutions including solitary waves for equations which do not allow integration within inverse scattering method is also presented.

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.