On the long-time asymptotics of the modified Camassa-Holm equation with step-like initial data

Abstract: We study the long time asymptotic behavior for the Cauchy problem of the modified Camassa-Holm (mCH) equation with step-like initial data \begin{align} &m_{t}+\left(m\left(u^{2}-u_{x}^{2}\right)\right)_{x}=0, \quad m=u-u_{xx}, \nonumber \ &u(x,0)=u_0(x)\to \left{ \begin{array}{ll} A_1, &\ x\to+\infty,\[5pt] A_2, &\ x\to-\infty, \end{array}\right.\nonumber \end{align} where $A_1$ and $A_2$ are two positive constants. Our main technical tool is the representation of the Cauchy problem with an associated matrix Riemann-Hilbert (RH) problem and the consequent asymptotic analysis of this RH problem. Based on the spectral analysis of the Lax pair associated with the mCH equation and scattering matrix, the solution of the step-like initial problem is characterized via the solution of a RH problem in the new scale $(y,t)$. We adopt double coordinates $(\xi, c)$ to divide the half-plane ${ (\xi,c): \xi \in \mathbb{R}, \ c> 0, \ \xi=y/t}$ into four asymptotic regions. Further using the Deift-Zhou steepest descent method, we derive different long time asymptotic expansion of the solution $u(y,t)$ in different space-time regions by the different choice of g-function. The corresponding leading asymptotic approximations are given with the slow/fast decay step-like background wave in genus-0 regions and elliptic waves in genus-2 regions. The second term of the asymptotics is characterized by Airy function or parabolic cylinder model. Their residual error order is $\mathcal{O}(t^{-1})$ or $\mathcal{O}(t^{-2})$ respectively.