Bifurcations of smooth and nonsmooth traveling wave solutions in a generalized Degasperis-Procesi equation (Q2372921)

The authors employ bifurcation theory of planar dynamical systems to study smooth and nonsmooth travelling wave solutions of the generalized Degasperis-Procesi equation \[ u_t - u_{xxt} + 4 u^m u_x = 3u_xu_{xx} + uu_{xxx}. \] By the usual ansatz \(u=\phi(x-ct)\) and integrating the resulting ODE once, they obtain a singular second order differential equation depending on 3 parameters \(m\), \(c\) and an integration constant \(g\). The periodic, homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits in the reduced system correspond to travelling waves in the original PDE. Due to the singularity of the ODE these travelling waves may lose smoothness. The different possibilities of phase portraits for even and odd values of \(m\) are classified for the different values of the parameters \(c\) and \(g\). Numerical calculations show good agreement with the analytical results.