Smoothing properties for a coupled system of nonlinear evolution dispersive equations (Q963245)

The paper deals with the smoothness properties of solutions to the coupled system of equations of Korteweg-de Vries type. Since the Korteweg-de Vries equation has gain in regularity, it is natural to expect that the same is true for the coupled system of such equations. The authors prove that it is indeed the case: the equations dispersive nature leads to a gain in regularity for the solution. In particular, if the initial data \((u_0, v_0)\) possesses certain regularity and sufficient decay as \(x \rightarrow \infty \), then the solution \((u(t),v(t))\) will be smoother than \((u_0, v_0)\) for \(0 < t \leq T\), where \(T\) is the existence time of the solution. Tools used in the proof include a local-in-time existence and uniqueness theorem and a series of estimates in weighted Sobolev norms.