On the Korteweg-de Vries limit for the Boussinesq equation

Abstract

The Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation is known as a universal equation describing various long waves in dispersive systems. In this article, we prove that in a certain scaling regime, a large class of rough solutions to the Boussinesq equation are approximated by the sums of two counter-propagating waves solving the KdV equations. It extends the earlier result by \cite{Schneider1998} to slightly more regular than $L^2$-solutions. Our proof is based on robust Fourier analysis methods developed for the low regularity theory of nonlinear dispersive equations.