Asymptotic stability of solitary waves in the Benney-Luke model of water waves. (Q375455)

The authors study the stability of a solitary wave solution of the nonlinear dispersive wave equation \[ \partial _t^2u-\partial _x^2u+a\partial _x^2\partial _t^2u+(\partial _tu)(\partial _x^2u)+2(\partial _xu)(\partial _x\partial _tu)=0, \] with any speed \(c>1\) and \(0<a<b\). In the first part, the authors show that, in the case of the absence of nonzero eigenvalues with nonnegative real part, spectral stability implies linear stability with an exponential decay rate in the exponentially weighted norm for perturbations orthogonal to the adjoint neutral-mode space generated by variations of the phase and wave amplitudes. The proof uses a suitable comparison of a reduced resolvent operator with the corresponding one for the KdV solitons. In the second part, it is proved that the nonlinear stability follows from the spectral stability.