Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Seminar
Topic: Water Waves, Solitons, and Unexpected Phenomena
Speaker: Amy Cohen-Corwin, Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers
University
Date and time: Wednesday, July 11, 2001, 12:00 noon
Location: CoRE Building, Room 301A, Rutgers University, Piscataway,
NJ
Lunch will be served.
The Korteweg-deVries equation (KdV) models long waves on shallow canals.
It is a non-linear partial differential equation. So sums of solutions
should not be solutions. Nonetheless, there are very special solutions
called "solitons", which display something very like a superposition principle.
Further every solution with reasonable initial data looks like a superposition
of solitons as time gets large.
This talk will show pictures to describe some results, and sketch out
a non-linear analog of the Fourier transform which underlies the results
with NO technical details.
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