Numerical simulations of Kadomtsev-Petviashvili soliton interactions

The Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation generalizes that of Korteweg and de Vries to two space dimensions and arises in various weakly dispersive media. Two very different species of soliton solutions are known for one variant, KPI. The first species to be discovered are line solitons, the second are two dimensional lumps. This paper describes numerical simulations, consistent with all constraints of the equation, in which very distorted line solitons break up into smaller line solitons and arrays of lumps. The arrays can interact with one another. In some cases, aspects of the results of the simulations can be understood in the light of specially constructed exact solutions. Simulations in which initial conditions fail to satisfy the constraints of the equation are also described.