Kinetic Equation for Soliton Gas: Integrable Reductions

Abstract

AbstractMacroscopic dynamics of soliton gases can be analytically described by the thermodynamic limit of the Whitham equations, yielding an integro-differential kinetic equation for the density of states. Under a delta-functional ansatz, the kinetic equation for soliton gas reduces to a non-diagonalisable system of hydrodynamic type whose matrix consists of several $$2\times 2$$ 2 × 2 Jordan blocks. Here we demonstrate the integrability of this system by showing that it possesses a hierarchy of commuting hydrodynamic flows and can be solved by an extension of the generalised hodograph method. Our approach is a generalisation of Tsarev’s theory of diagonalisable systems of hydrodynamic type to quasilinear systems with non-trivial Jordan block structure.