Talbot effect for the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation on the torus

Abstract: We study the evolution of the one dimensional periodic cubic Schr\"odinger equation (NLS) with bounded variation data. For the linear evolution, it is known that for irrational times the solution is a continuous, nowhere differentiable fractal-like curve. For rational times the solution is a linear combination of finitely many translates of the initial data. Such a dichotomy was first observed by Talbot in an optical experiment performed in 1836. In this paper we prove that a similar phenomenon occurs in the case of the NLS equation.