Collapsing states of generalized Korteweg-de Vries equations (Q914072)

Generalized Korteweg-de Vries equations of the form \[ \partial_ tq+q^ p\partial_ xq+\partial_ x\nabla^ 2q=0\quad (q: {\mathbb{R}}^ d\times {\mathbb{R}}^+\to {\mathbb{R}}) \] are considered. First, it is shown by simple arguments that a collapse could occur if the nonlinearity is large enough. It is also proved that for some parameters no collapse can take place. The proof of the conjecture that in the complementary parameter region higher nonlinear Korteweg-de Vries equations have a focusing singularity is, however, far from being complete. Therefore, in the second part of the paper, the variation of action method, with a collective coordinate ansatz, is used to demonstrate for the first time a Korteweg-de Vries collapse for power-law nonlinearities \((q^ p\partial_ xq)\) at and above the critical exponent \(p=4\) \((d=1)\). It is shown that the time dependence of the focusing amplitude is asymptotically of the form \(A(t)\sim (t_ c-t)^{-1/(p+2)}\) where \(t_ c\) is the collapse time. Meanwhile, the above results could be extended to arbitrary space dimensions \(d>1\). The critical exponent is then \(p=4/d\) and the collapse amplitude for pd\(\geq 4\) is given by \(A(t)\sim (t_ c-t)^{-d/(pd+2)}\).