Article
J. Differential Equations 261, 5371-5410 (2016) [DOI: 10.1016/j.jde.2016.08.009]

Rarefaction Waves of the Korteweg-de Vries Equation via Nonlinear Steepest Descent

Kyrylo Andreiev, Iryna Egorova, Till Luc Lange, and Gerald Teschl

Abstract
We apply the method of nonlinear steepest descent to compute the long-time asymptotics of the Korteweg-de Vries equation with steplike initial data leading to a rarefaction wave. In addition to the leading asymptotic we also compute the next term in the asymptotic expansion of the rarefaction wave, which was not known before.

MSC2000: Primary 37K40, 35Q53; Secondary 37K45, 35Q15
Keywords: KdV equation, rarefaction wave, Riemann-Hilbert problem

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