Stability of algebraic solitons for nonlinear Schrödinger equations of derivative type: variational approach (Q2099123)

The goal of this article is to study the stability of solitons for perturbed derivative nonlinear Schrödinger equations \[ iu_t +u_{xx} + i |u|^2 \partial_x(u) +b |u|^4u = 0,\tag{1} \] on the real line with \(b <0\). This issue has been extensively investigated in the case of the derivative nonlinear Schrödinger equation corresponding to the case when \(b=0\) as well as in the case when \(b>0\) where it was shown that (1) possesses both stable and unstable solitons. However, this subject has been less studied in the case when \(b <0\) which is the aim of this work. It is well-known that (1) has an explicit two-parameter family of solitons, namely well-localized global solutions travelling at a fixed speed, of the form \[ u_{\omega, c}(t,x)= e^ {i \omega t} \varphi_{\omega, c}(x-ct), \] where \(\varphi_{\omega, c}\) solves an elliptic equation and vanishes at infinity, provided that the parameters \((\omega, c)\) satisfy a (necessary and sufficient) condition that is modified at the value \( b=- \frac 3 {16}\), where the structure of the solitons changes. In this work, the author proves the stability of the solitons \(u_{\omega, c}\) in the energy space by a variational approach depending on whether \( b>- \frac 3 {16}\) or \( b\leq - \frac 3 {16}\cdotp\)