Review of some recent results in perturbation theory for solitary waves (Q1366737)

This review presents the recent results in soliton perturbation for both integrable and non-integrable problems, to point out the unifying ideas and to discuss their limitations. Some of the ideas of wide applicability are presented informally, but with some details in order to help the non-specialist to put into perspective the basic philosophy. Some others which are more in the nature of examples with unexpected features are discussed briefly. Some unsolved problems are pointed out at the end. In the first section there are sketched the main results of the inverse scattering formulation for the soliton and the periodic problem. The second section presents results of the perturbation theory of integrable equations when the radiation plays only a passive role and the solitons dominate the solution. It also presents results for perturbation of quasiperiodic solutions. The third section presents perturbation results for one-dimensional equations which are not integrable. The fourth section is devoted to the description of perturbations using more general parametrizations. It includes the recent results on the interaction between solitons and radiation. The last part of the review contains results on multidimensional problems with applications to water waves and nonlinear field theory.