An alternative approach to integrable discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equations (Q385595)

The authors point out some problems with the standard linear counterpart to the (matrix) integrable discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and propose an alternative linear counterpart in order to overcome these problems. Thus they replace the usual finite difference approximation (1.2) of the Zakharov-Shabat system -- where the derivative with respect to \(x\) is replaced by a forward difference term -- with equation (1.5), obtained by applying a central finite difference scheme. Using equation (1.5) then means that they do not need to assume the invertibility of \(I_N-u_nw_n\) and \(I_M-w_nu_n\), and that getting the potentials from the Marchenko equations proceeds similarly to the continuous case and does not require renormalization of the Marchenko kernel. A comparison with the results of other authors, in particular with respect to the assumption or otherwise of condition (1.4), is given in the introduction. They authors also note that they do not have a Lax pair or an AKNS pair based on their equation (1.5), in contrast to equation (1.2).