Orbital stability of periodic waves for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (Q2467197)

The authors deal with the stability analysis of the quasi-periodic travelling wave solutions to the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation \[ i{\partial u\over\partial t}+ {\partial^2u\over\partial^2 x}+ \gamma|u(x,t)|^2 u(x,t)= 0,\quad x\in\mathbb{R},\;t\in\mathbb{R},\tag{1} \] where \(\gamma= \{-1,1\}\) and \(u(x,t)\in\mathbb{C}\). The goal of the authors is to show that the periodic wave \(u(x,t)= e^{i(px-\omega t)}Q(2kx)\) of (1) is stable within the class of solutions which have the same period \(T= {\pi\over k}\) and the same Floquet multiplier \(e^{ipT}\). Here \(p\in\mathbb{R}\), \(k> 0\) and \(Q: \mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{C}\) is \(2\pi\)-periodic. In other words, they restrict themselves to solutions of (1) of the form \(e^{i(px-\omega t)}Q(2kx,t)\), where \(Q(\cdot,t)\) belongs to the functional space \[ X= H^1_{\text{per}}([0, 2\pi], \mathbb{C})= \{Q\in H^1_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R}, \mathbb{C})\mid Q(z)= Q(z+ 2\pi),\;\forall z\in\mathbb{R}\}. \] The advantage of such restricted setting is that nonlinear stability can be established by the standard variational method. To this end the authors use general approach to orbital stability developed by Grillakis, Shatah, and Strauss.