On KdV soliton splitting (Q1821966)

The process of splitting of an initial soliton-type excitation is investigated in the case when its parameters (the amplitude and width) do not correspond to a propagating soliton of the KdV equation. The single splitting into N solitons is exact only for a reflectionless potential. In other cases a ''mass defect'' that has been estimated quantitatively for \(N=2,3,4\), occurs. A formalization of the continuous splitting procedure is introduced, containing the notions of an n-spectrum and a binary code. The number of solitons with equal amplitudes at each nth splitting is governed by the binomial series.