Concentric-ring patterns of higher-order lumps in the Kadomtsev--Petviashvili I equation

Abstract: Large-time patterns of general higher-order lump solutions in the KP-I equation are investigated. It is shown that when the index vector of the general lump solution is a sequence of consecutive odd integers starting from one, the large-time pattern in the spatial $(x, y)$ plane generically would comprise fundamental lumps uniformly distributed on concentric rings. For other index vectors, the large-time pattern would comprise fundamental lumps in the outer region as described analytically by the nonzero-root structure of the associated Wronskian-Hermit polynomial, together with possible fundamental lumps in the inner region that are uniformly distributed on concentric rings generically. Leading-order predictions of fundamental lumps in these solution patterns are also derived. The predicted patterns at large times are compared to true solutions, and good agreement is observed.