Conditional stability of multiple-charged solitons (Q801465)

Lyapunov's direct method is used to study the stability of three- dimensional stationary soliton solutions to general variational second order equations. The stationary (periodic in time) solutions are defined as critical points \(\phi =u\) of additive translationally invariant functionals of the form \(A=\int_{R^ 3}d^ 3x{\mathcal A}({\dot \phi},\partial_ i\phi,\phi).\) Hence at the point \(\phi =u\), \(\delta A/\delta \phi =\delta A/\delta {\dot \phi}=0\) with \(u(t,\infty)=0\). Using these facts and putting in \(\delta^ 2A\) the private variation \(\delta \phi =\Sigma_ jf_ j(\bar r)\partial_ ju,\) the following statement extending the well-known Hobart-Derrick instability theorem, can be proved. Namely, it appears that \(\delta^ 2A\) is sign changing in the vicinity of the point \(\phi =u\). Noting that Lyapunov's functional must be positive definite in the vicinity of its critical point, one concludes that with the help of an additive Lyapunov's functional one can obtain information only about conditional stability of staionary solitons (this conclusion also holds for solitons in \(R^ n\), \(n\geq 2).\) In particular, if the equations of motion admit the Abelian group with representation generators \(\Gamma_ i\), \(i=1,...,s\) then there exist the Noetherian conserved charges \(Q_ i\), and one can fix the integral of motion \(Q=\sum^{s}_{1}\omega_ iQ_ i\). This subsidiary condition being imposed, one can choose the energy as Lyapunov's functional for the stationary solution of the form \(\phi =\exp (\sum^{s}_{1}\omega_ i\Gamma_ it)u(\underline r).\) Then the stability domain for the parameters \(\omega_ i\), if it exists, is given by the inequality \(\sum_{i,k}\omega_ i\omega_ k\partial Q_ i/\partial \omega_ k<0.\)