Spectral analysis of Darboux transformations for the focusing NLS hierarchy (Q2565903)

The authors study the Lax differential operator of Dirac type used to generate solutions of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation and introduce a Darboux transformation which modifies the potential to produce additional point eigenvalues. The Lax operator has the form \[ M(q)= i\left[\begin{matrix} d/dx & q\\ -\overline q & d/dx\end{matrix}\right] \] on \(L_2(\mathbb{R})^2\), where \(M(q)\) is formally \(J\) selfadjoint with \(J[u,v]^T= \left[\begin{smallmatrix} 0 & 1\\ 1 & 0\end{smallmatrix}\right][\overline u,\overline v]^T\). For \(q\in L^1_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R})\), the maximal operator \(D(q)\) determined by \(M(q)\) is proved to be \(J\) selfadjoint. Starting with the potential \(q(x)\) repeated application of the Darboux transformation is shown to produce a set of potentials \(q^{(1)}, q^{(2)},\dots, q^{(N)}\) which define operators \(D(q^{(N)})\) with the same spectrum as \(D(q)\) and \(2N\) additional arbitrarily assigned eigenvalues.