Hamiltonian dynamics of an elastica and the stability of solitary waves (Q2365376)

It is known that in the theory of uniform, inextensible, unshearable rods of infinite length there arise solitary-wave solutions with the property that each profile can move at arbitrary speed. The Hamiltonian formulation is exploited to analyze the stability properties of these solitary waves. The wave profiles are first characterized as critical points of an appropriate time-invariant functional. It is then shown that for a certain range of wave speeds the solitary-wave profiles are actually nonisolated minimizers of the functional, a fact with implications for nonlinear stability.