Existence of solitons in the nonlinear beam equation

Abstract

This paper concerns with the existence of solitons, namely stable solitary waves in the nonlinear beam equation (NBE) with a suitable nonlinearity. An equation of this type has been introduced by P.J. McKenna and W. Walter as a model of a suspension bridge. We prove both the existence of solitary waves for a large class of nonlinearities and their stability. As far as we know this is the first result about stability of solitary waves in NBE.