Nonlinear stability of 2-solitons of the sine-Gordon equation in the energy space (Q2422795)

The authors consider the sine-Gordon equation \[ \phi_{tt}-\phi_{xx}+\sin \phi=0,\tag{1} \] where $\phi =\phi(t,x)$ is a real or complex-valued function. The main aim is to study the stability of 2-solitons. Let $x_1,x_2\in \mathbb{R}$ be shift parameters, $\beta\in (-1,1)$ be a scaling parameter, and $\gamma=(1-\beta^2)^{-\tfrac{1}{2}}$. The first 2-soliton is the breather \[ B(t,x;\beta,x_1,x_2)= 4\arctan \left(\frac{\beta}{\alpha} \frac{\sin(\alpha (t+x_1))}{\cosh(\beta (x+x_2))} \right), \quad \alpha=\sqrt{1-\beta^2}, \quad \beta\neq 0.\tag{2} \] The second 2-soliton is 2-kink \[ R(t,x;\beta,x_1,x_2)= 4\arctan \left( \beta \frac{\sinh(\gamma (x+x_2))}{\cosh(\gamma (t+x_1))} \right), \quad \beta \neq 0.\tag{3} \] The third 2-soliton is kink-antikink \[ A(t,x;\beta,x_1,x_2)=4\arctan \left(\frac{1}{\beta} \frac{\sinh(\gamma (t+x_1))}{\cosh(\gamma (x+x_2))}\right), \quad \beta \neq 0.\tag{4} \] The main result reads as follows. Theorem. The 2-solitons of equation (1) are nonlinearly stable under perturbations in the energy space $H^1\times L^2$. More precisely, there exist $C_0>0$ and $\eta_0>0$ such that the following holds. Let $(\phi,\phi_t)$ be a solution of (1), with initial data $(\phi_0,\phi_1)$ such that \[ \Vert (\phi_0,\phi_1)-(D,D_t)(0,~\cdot~;\beta,0,0)\Vert_{H^1\times L^2}< \eta, \] for some $0<\eta<\eta_0$ sufficiently small, and where $(D,D_t)(t,~\cdot~; \beta, 0,0)$ is a 2-soliton (breather (2), 2-kink (3) or kink-antikink (4)). Then, there are shifts $x_1(t),x_2(t)\in \mathbb{R}$ well-defined and differentiable such that \[ \sup_{t\in \mathbb{R}}\Vert (\phi(t),\phi_t(t))-(D,D_t)(t,~\cdot~;\beta,x_1(t),x_2(t))\Vert_{H^1\times L^2}< C_0\eta. \] Moreover, we have \[ \sup_{t\in \mathbb{R}} |x_1'(t)| +|x_2'(t)| \lesssim C_0\eta. \]