A minimization method and applications to the study of solitons (Q435866)

In the paper under review, the authors prove a general abstract theorem that allows to derive existence of a class of solitons related to field equations. Precisely, a solitary wave is a solution of a field equation whose energy travels as a localized packet and which preserves this localization in time. A soliton is a solitary wave which exhibits some strong form of stability so that it has a particle-like behavior. The solitons studied in the paper are suitable minimizers of a constrained functional, and these are called hylomorphic solitons. The abstract theory developed is further applied to problems related to the nonlinear Schrödinger and Klein-Gordon equations.