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

Abstract: By means of an asymptotic perturbation method, we study the initial value problem of the KP equation with initial data consisting of parts of exact line-soliton solutions of the equation. We consider a slow modulation of the soliton parameters, which is described by a dynamical system obtained by the perturbation method. The system is given by a quasi-linear system, and in particular, we show that a singular solution ({shock wave}) leads to a generation of new soliton as a result of resonant interaction of solitons. We also show that a regular solution corresponding to a rarefaction wave can be described by a parabola (we call it {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.