Soliton - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

and physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

, a soliton is a self-reinforcing solitary wave

Wave

In physics, a wave is a disturbance that travels through space and time, accompanied by the transfer of energy.Waves travel and the wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium—that is, with little or no associated mass...

(a wave packet

Wave packet

In physics, a wave packet is a short "burst" or "envelope" of wave action that travels as a unit. A wave packet can be analyzed into, or can be synthesized from, an infinite set of component sinusoidal waves of different wavenumbers, with phases and amplitudes such that they interfere...

or pulse) that maintains its shape while it travels at constant speed. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear

Nonlinearity

In mathematics, a nonlinear system is one that does not satisfy the superposition principle, or one whose output is not directly proportional to its input; a linear system fulfills these conditions. In other words, a nonlinear system is any problem where the variable to be solved for cannot be...

and dispersive effects

Dispersion relation

In physics and electrical engineering, dispersion most often refers to frequency-dependent effects in wave propagation. Note, however, that there are several other uses of the word "dispersion" in the physical sciences....

in the medium. (The term "dispersive effects" refers to a property of certain systems where the speed of the waves varies according to frequency.) Solitons arise as the solutions of a widespread class of weakly nonlinear dispersive partial differential equation

Partial differential equation

In mathematics, partial differential equations are a type of differential equation, i.e., a relation involving an unknown function of several independent variables and their partial derivatives with respect to those variables...

s describing physical systems. The soliton phenomenon was first described by John Scott Russell

John Scott Russell

John Scott Russell was a Scottish naval engineer who built the Great Eastern in collaboration with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and made the discovery that gave birth to the modern study of solitons.-Personal life:John Scott Russell was born John Russell on 9 May 1808 in Parkhead, Glasgow, the son of...

(1808–1882) who observed a solitary wave in the Union Canal

Union Canal (Scotland)

The Union Canal is a 31.5-mile canal in Scotland, from Lochrin Basin, Fountainbridge, Edinburgh to Falkirk, where it meets the Forth and Clyde Canal.-Location and features:...

in Scotland. He reproduced the phenomenon in a wave tank

Wave tank

A wave tank is a laboratory setup for observing the behavior of surface waves. The typical wave tank is a deep and narrow, transparent-sided box filled with liquid, usually water, leaving open or air-filled space on top. At one end of the tank an actuator generates waves; the other end usually...

and named it the "Wave of Translation".

Definition

A single, consensus definition of a soliton is difficult to find. ascribe three properties to solitons:

They are of permanent form;
They are localised within a region;
They can interact with other solitons, and emerge from the collision unchanged, except for a phase shift
Phase (waves)
Phase in waves is the fraction of a wave cycle which has elapsed relative to an arbitrary point.-Formula:The phase of an oscillation or wave refers to a sinusoidal function such as the following:...

.

More formal definitions exist, but they require substantial mathematics. Moreover, some scientists use the term soliton for phenomena that do not quite have these three properties (for instance, the 'light bullets' of nonlinear optics

Nonlinear optics

Nonlinear optics is the branch of optics that describes the behavior of light in nonlinear media, that is, media in which the dielectric polarization P responds nonlinearly to the electric field E of the light...

are often called solitons despite losing energy during interaction).

Explanation

Dispersion and non-linearity can interact to produce permanent and localized wave forms. Consider a pulse of light traveling in glass. This pulse can be thought of as consisting of light of several different frequencies. Since glass shows dispersion, these different frequencies will travel at different speeds and the shape of the pulse will therefore change over time. However, there is also the non-linear Kerr effect

Kerr effect

The Kerr effect, also called the quadratic electro-optic effect , is a change in the refractive index of a material in response to an applied electric field. The Kerr effect is distinct from the Pockels effect in that the induced index change is directly proportional to the square of the electric...

: the refractive index

Refractive index

In optics the refractive index or index of refraction of a substance or medium is a measure of the speed of light in that medium. It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light in vacuum relative to that in the considered medium....

of a material at a given frequency depends on the light's amplitude or strength. If the pulse has just the right shape, the Kerr effect will exactly cancel the dispersion effect, and the pulse's shape won't change over time: a soliton. See soliton (optics)

Soliton (optics)

In optics, the term soliton is used to refer to any optical field that does not change during propagation because of a delicate balance between nonlinear and linear effects in the medium. There are two main kinds of solitons:...

for a more detailed description.

Many exactly solvable models have soliton solutions, including the Korteweg–de Vries equation

Korteweg–de Vries equation

In mathematics, the Korteweg–de Vries equation is a mathematical model of waves on shallow water surfaces. It is particularly notable as the prototypical example of an exactly solvable model, that is, a non-linear partial differential equation whose solutions can be exactly and precisely specified...

, the nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Nonlinear Schrödinger equation

In theoretical physics, the nonlinear Schrödinger equation is a nonlinear version of Schrödinger's equation. It is a classical field equation with applications to optics and water waves. Unlike the Schrödinger equation, it never describes the time evolution of a quantum state...

, the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and the sine-Gordon equation

Sine-Gordon equation

The sine–Gordon equation is a nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equation in 1 + 1 dimensions involving the d'Alembert operator and the sine of the unknown function. It was originally considered in the nineteenth century in the course of study of surfaces of constant negative...

. The soliton solutions are typically obtained by means of the inverse scattering transform

Inverse scattering transform

In mathematics, the inverse scattering transform is a method for solving some non-linear partial differential equations. It is one of the most important developments in mathematical physics in the past 40 years...

and owe their stability to the integrability

Integrability

Integrability may refer to:* Riemann integrability; see Riemann integral* Lebesgue integrability; see Lebesgue integral* Darboux integrability; see Darboux integral* System integration * Interoperability...

of the field equations. The mathematical theory of these equations is a broad and very active field of mathematical research.

Some types of tidal bore

Tidal bore

A tidal bore is a tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travel up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay's current...

, a wave phenomenon of a few rivers including the River Severn

River Severn

The River Severn is the longest river in Great Britain, at about , but the second longest on the British Isles, behind the River Shannon. It rises at an altitude of on Plynlimon, Ceredigion near Llanidloes, Powys, in the Cambrian Mountains of mid Wales...

, are 'undular': a wavefront followed by a train of solitons. Other solitons occur as the undersea internal wave

Internal wave

Internal waves are gravity waves that oscillate within, rather than on the surface of, a fluid medium. They are one of many types of wave motion in stratified fluids . A simple example is a wave propagating on the interface between two fluids of different densities, such as oil and water...

s, initiated by seabed topography

Topography

Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those ofplanets, moons, and asteroids...

, that propagate on the oceanic pycnocline

Pycnocline

A pycnocline is the cline or layer where the density gradient is greatest within a body of water. An ocean current is generated by the forces such as breaking waves, terms of temperature and salinity differences, wind, Coriolis effect, and tides caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the...

. Atmospheric solitons also exist, such as the Morning Glory Cloud

Morning glory cloud

The Morning Glory cloud is a rare meteorological phenomenon occasionally observed in different locations around the world. The southern part of Northern Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria is the only known location where it can be predicted and observed on a more or less regular basis. The settlement...

of the Gulf of Carpentaria

Gulf of Carpentaria

The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea...

, where pressure solitons travelling in a temperature inversion layer produce vast linear roll clouds. The recent and not widely accepted soliton model

Soliton model

The Soliton model in neuroscience is a recently developed model that attempts to explain how signals are conducted within neurons. It proposes that the signals travel along the cell's membrane in the form of certain kinds of sound pulses known as solitons...

in neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

proposes to explain the signal conduction within neuron

Neuron

A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...

s as pressure solitons.

A topological soliton, also called a topological defect, is any solution of a set of partial differential equation

Partial differential equation

s that is stable against decay to the "trivial solution." Soliton stability is due to topological constraints, rather than integrability

Integrability

of the field equations. The constraints arise almost always because the differential equations must obey a set of boundary conditions, and the boundary has a non-trivial homotopy group

Homotopy group

In mathematics, homotopy groups are used in algebraic topology to classify topological spaces. The first and simplest homotopy group is the fundamental group, which records information about loops in a space...

, preserved by the differential equations. Thus, the differential equation solutions can be classified into homotopy classes. There is no continuous transformation that will map a solution in one homotopy class to another. The solutions are truly distinct, and maintain their integrity, even in the face of extremely powerful forces. Examples of topological solitons include the screw dislocation in a crystalline lattice, the Dirac string

Dirac string

In physics, a Dirac string is a fictitious one-dimensional curve in space, conceived of by the physicist Paul Dirac, stretching between two Dirac magnetic monopoles with opposite magnetic charges, or from one magnetic monopole out to infinity. The gauge potential cannot be defined on the Dirac...

and the magnetic monopole

Magnetic monopole

A magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle in particle physics that is a magnet with only one magnetic pole . In more technical terms, a magnetic monopole would have a net "magnetic charge". Modern interest in the concept stems from particle theories, notably the grand unified and superstring...

in electromagnetism

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...

, the Skyrmion

Skyrmion

In theoretical physics, a skyrmion is a mathematical model used to model baryons . It was conceived by Tony Skyrme.-Overview:...

and the Wess–Zumino–Witten model in quantum field theory

Quantum field theory

Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...

, and cosmic string

Cosmic string

Cosmic strings are hypothetical 1-dimensional topological defects which may have formed during a symmetry breaking phase transition in the early universe when the topology of the vacuum manifold associated to this symmetry breaking is not simply connected. It is expected that at least one string...

s and domain wall

Domain wall

A domain wall is a term used in physics which can have one of two distinct but similar meanings in magnetism, optics, or string theory. These phenomena can all be generically described as topological solitons which occur whenever a discrete symmetry is spontaneously broken.-Magnetism:In magnetism,...

s in cosmology

Physical cosmology

Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion...

History

In 1834, John Scott Russell

John Scott Russell

describes his wave of translation."Translation" here means that there is real mass transport, although it is not the same water which is transported from one end of the canal to the other end by this "Wave of Translation". Rather, a fluid parcel acquires momentum

Momentum

In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...

during the passage of the solitary wave, and comes to rest again after the passage of the wave. But the fluid parcel has been displaced substantially forward during the process – by Stokes drift

Stokes drift

For a pure wave motion in fluid dynamics, the Stokes drift velocity is the average velocity when following a specific fluid parcel as it travels with the fluid flow...

in the wave propagation direction. And a net mass transport is the result. Usually there is little mass transport from one side to another side for ordinary waves. The discovery is described here in Scott Russell's own words:This passage has been repeated in many papers and books on soliton theory.

"I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped – not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour, preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation".

Scott Russell spent some time making practical and theoretical investigations of these waves. He built wave tanks at his home and noticed some key properties:

The waves are stable, and can travel over very large distances (normal waves would tend to either flatten out, or steepen and topple over)
The speed depends on the size of the wave, and its width on the depth of water.
Unlike normal waves they will never merge – so a small wave is overtaken by a large one, rather than the two combining.
If a wave is too big for the depth of water, it splits into two, one big and one small.

Scott Russell's experimental work seemed at odds with Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

's and Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli was a Dutch-Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics...

's theories of hydrodynamics. George Biddell Airy

George Biddell Airy

Sir George Biddell Airy PRS KCB was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881...

and George Gabriel Stokes

George Gabriel Stokes

Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 1st Baronet FRS , was an Irish mathematician and physicist, who at Cambridge made important contributions to fluid dynamics , optics, and mathematical physics...

had difficulty accepting Scott Russell's experimental observations because they could not be explained by the existing water wave theories. Their contemporaries spent some time attempting to extend the theory but it would take until the 1870s before Joseph Boussinesq and Lord Rayleigh published a theoretical treatment and solutions.Lord Rayleigh published a paper in Philosophical Magazine in 1876 to support John Scott Russell's experimental observation with his mathematical theory. In his 1876 paper, Lord Rayleigh mentioned Scott Russell's name and also admitted that the first theoretical treatment was by Joseph Valentin Boussinesq in 1871. Joseph Boussinesq mentioned Russell's name in his 1871 paper. Thus Scott Russell's observations on solitons were accepted as true by some prominent scientists within his own lifetime of 1808–1882. In 1895 Diederik Korteweg

Diederik Korteweg

Diederik Johannes Korteweg was a Dutch mathematician. He is now remembered as the joint discoverer of the Korteweg–de Vries equation.-Early life and education:...

and Gustav de Vries

Gustav de Vries

Gustav de Vries was a Dutch mathematician, who is best remembered for his work on the Korteweg–de Vries equation with Diederik Korteweg. He was born on 22 January 1866 in Amsterdam, and studied at the University of Amsterdam with the distinguished physical chemist Johannes van der Waals and with...

provided what is now known as the Korteweg–de Vries equation

Korteweg–de Vries equation

, including solitary wave and periodic cnoidal wave

Cnoidal wave

In fluid dynamics, a cnoidal wave is a nonlinear and exact periodic wave solution of the Korteweg–de Vries equation. These solutions are in terms of the Jacobi elliptic function cn, which is why they are coined cnoidal waves...

solutions.Korteweg and de Vries did not mention John Scott Russell's name at all in their 1895 paper but they did quote Boussinesq's paper of 1871 and Lord Rayleigh's paper of 1876. The paper by Korteweg and de Vries in 1895 was not the first theoretical treatment of this subject but it was a very important milestone in the history of the development of soliton theory.

In 1965 Norman Zabusky

Norman Zabusky

Norman J. Zabusky is an American physicist, who is noted for the discovery of the soliton in the Korteweg–de Vries equation, in work completed with Martin Kruskal. This result early in his career was followed by an extensive body of work in computational fluid dynamics, which led him more...

of Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

and Martin Kruskal

Martin Kruskal

Martin David Kruskal was an American mathematician and physicist. He made fundamental contributions in many areas of mathematics and science, ranging from plasma physics to general relativity and from nonlinear analysis to asymptotic analysis...

of Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

first demonstrated soliton behaviour in media subject to the Korteweg–de Vries equation

Korteweg–de Vries equation

(KdV equation) in a computational investigation using a finite difference

Finite difference

A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f − f. If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient...

approach. They also showed how this behavior explained the puzzling earlier work of Fermi, Pasta and Ulam.

In 1967, Gardner, Greene, Kruskal and Miura discovered an inverse scattering transform

Inverse scattering transform

enabling analytical

Analytic function

In mathematics, an analytic function is a function that is locally given by a convergent power series. There exist both real analytic functions and complex analytic functions, categories that are similar in some ways, but different in others...

solution of the KdV equation. The work of Peter Lax

Peter Lax

Peter David Lax is a mathematician working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics. He has made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dynamics and shock waves, solitonic physics, hyperbolic conservation laws, and mathematical and scientific computing, among other fields...

on Lax pair

Lax pair

In mathematics, in the theory of integrable systems, a Lax pair is a pair of time-dependent matrices or operators that describe the corresponding differential equations. They were introduced by Peter Lax to discuss solitons in continuous media...

s and the Lax equation has since extended this to solution of many related soliton-generating systems.

Solitons in fiber optics

Much experimentation has been done using solitons in fiber optics applications. Solitons in a fiber optic system are described by the Manakov equations.
Solitons' inherent stability make long-distance transmission possible without the use of repeater

Repeater

A repeater is an electronic device that receives asignal and retransmits it at a higher level and/or higher power, or onto the other side of an obstruction, so that the signal can cover longer distances.-Description:...

s, and could potentially double transmission capacity as well.

Year	Discovery
1973	Akira Hasegawa of AT&T AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services... Bell Labs Bell Labs Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its... was the first to suggest that solitons could exist in optical fiber Optical fiber An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of... s, due to a balance between self-phase modulation Self-phase modulation Self-phase modulation is a nonlinear optical effect of light-matter interaction.An ultrashort pulse of light, when travelling in a medium, will induce a varying refractive index of the medium due to the optical Kerr effect... and anomalous dispersion Dispersion (optics) In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency, or alternatively when the group velocity depends on the frequency.Media having such a property are termed dispersive media... . Also in 1973 Robin Bullough Robin Bullough Robin K. Bullough was a British Mathematical Physicist famous for his contributions to the theory of solitons, in particular for his role in the development of the theory of the optical soliton, now commonly used, for example, in the theory of trans-oceanic optical fibre communication theory, but... made the first mathematical report of the existence of optical solitons. He also proposed the idea of a soliton-based transmission system to increase performance of optical telecommunication Telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded... s.
1987	– from the Universities of Brussels and Limoges – made the first experimental observation of the propagation of a dark soliton, in an optical fiber.
1988	Linn Mollenauer and his team transmitted soliton pulses over 4,000 kilometers using a phenomenon called the Raman effect, named after Sir C. V. Raman Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in the world. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected... who first described it in the 1920s, to provide optical gain in the fiber.
1991	A Bell Labs research team transmitted solitons error-free at 2.5 gigabits per second over more than 14,000 kilometers, using erbium Erbium Erbium is a chemical element in the lanthanide series, with the symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements on Earth... optical fiber amplifiers (spliced-in segments of optical fiber containing the rare earth element erbium). Pump lasers, coupled to the optical amplifiers, activate the erbium, which energizes the light pulses.
1998	Thierry Georges and his team at France Telecom France Télécom France Telecom S.A. is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 180,000 people and has 192.7 million customers worldwide . In 2010 the group had revenue of €45.5 billion... R&D Center, combining optical solitons of different wavelength Wavelength In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a... s (wavelength-division multiplexing Wavelength-division multiplexing In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths of laser light... ), demonstrated a composite data transmission of 1 terabit Binary prefix In computing, a binary prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is prepended to the units of digital information, the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of 2... per second (1,000,000,000,000 units of information per second), not to be confused with Terabit-Ethernet. The above impressive experiments have not translated to actual commercial soliton system deployments however, in either terrestrial or submarine systems, chiefly due to the Gordon–Haus (GH) jitter. The GH jitter requires sophisticated, expensive compensatory solutions that ultimately makes DWDM soliton transmission in the field unattractive, compared to the conventional non-return-to-zero/return-to-zero paradigm. Further, the likely future adoption of the more spectrally efficient phase-shift-keyed/QAM formats makes soliton transmission even less viable, due to the Gordon-Mollenauer effect. Consequently, the long-haul fiberoptic transmission soliton has remained a laboratory curiosity.
2000	Cundiff predicted the existence of a vector soliton Vector soliton In physical optics or wave optics, a vector soliton is a solitary wave with multiple components coupled together that maintains its shape during propagation. Ordinary solitons maintain their shape but have effectively only one polarization component, while vector solitons have two distinct... in a birefringence fiber cavity passively mode locking through SESAM Sesam Sesam was a Scandinavian internet search engine developed by the media corporation Schibsted. It was available both in a Norwegian and Swedish version and was launched on 1 November 2005. By 2007 Sesam.no had 480,000 unique users and was among the 12 largest web sites in Norway... . The polarization state of such a vector soliton could either be rotating or locked depending on the cavity parameters.
2008	D. Y. Tang et al. observed a novel form of higher-order vector soliton Vector soliton In physical optics or wave optics, a vector soliton is a solitary wave with multiple components coupled together that maintains its shape during propagation. Ordinary solitons maintain their shape but have effectively only one polarization component, while vector solitons have two distinct... from the perspect of experiments and numerical simulations. Different types of vector solitons and the polarization state of vector solitons have been investigated by his group.

Solitons in proteins and DNA

Solitons may occur in proteins and DNA. Solitons are related to the low-frequency collective motion in proteins and DNA.

Solitons in magnets

In magnets, there also exist different types of solitons and other nonlinear waves. These magnetic solitons are an exact solution of classical nonlinear differential equations — magnetic equations, e.g. the Landau–Lifshitz equation

Landau–Lifshitz equation

In physics, the Landau–Lifshitz equation , named for Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz, is a name used for several different differential equations*For the Landau–Lifshitz aeroacoustic equation see aeroacoustics....

, continuum Heisenberg model

Heisenberg model

The Heisenberg model can refer to two models in statistical mechanics:*Heisenberg model , a classical nearest neighbour spin model*Heisenberg model , a model where the spins are treated quantum mechanically using Pauli matrices....

, Ishimori equation

Ishimori equation

The Ishimori equation is a partial differential equation proposed by the Japanese mathematician . Its interest is as the first example of a nonlinear spin-one field model in the plane that is integrable .-Equation:The IE has the form...

, nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Nonlinear Schrödinger equation

and so on.

Bions

The bound state of two solitons is known as a bion.

In field theory Bion usually refers to the solution of the Born–Infeld model

Born–Infeld model

In theoretical physics, the Born–Infeld model is a particular example of what is usually known as a nonlinear electrodynamics. It was historically introduced in the 30s to remove the divergence of the electron's self-energy in classical electrodynamics by introducing an upper bound of the electric...

. The name appears to have been coined by G. W. Gibbons in order to distinguish this solution from the conventional soliton, understood as a regular, finite-energy (and usually stable) solution of a differential equation describing some physical system. The word regular means a smooth solution carrying no sources at all. However, the solution of the Born–Infeld model still carries a source in the form of a Dirac-delta function at the origin. As a consequence it displays a singularity in this point (although the electric field is everywhere regular). In some physical contexts (for instance string theory) this feature can be important, which motivated the introduction of a special name for this class of solitons.

On the other hand, when gravity is added (i.e. when considering the coupling of the Born–Infeld model to general relativity) the corresponding solution is called EBIon, where "E" stands for Einstein.

External links

Related to John Scott Russell

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Definition

Explanation

History

Solitons in fiber optics

Solitons in proteins and DNA

Solitons in magnets

Bions

See also

External links