Regularizations for shock and rarefaction waves in the perturbed solitons of the KP equation

Abstract

Using an asymptotic perturbation method, we study the initial value problem for the KP equation with initial data consisting of parts of exact line-soliton solutions. We consider a slow modulation of the soliton parameters, described by a dynamical system obtained via the perturbation method. {The dynamical system is given by a $2$-component quasi-linear system.} In particular, we show that a singular solution (\emph{shock wave}) {of the system} leads to the generation of a new soliton as a result of the resonant interaction of solitons. We also show that a regular solution corresponding to a rarefaction wave {of the system} can be described by a parabola (which we call a \emph{parabolic soliton}). We then perform numerical simulations of the initial value problem and show that they are in excellent agreement with the results obtained by the perturbation method.