solitary wave

In mathematics and physics, a solitary wave can refer to

• The wave of translation, a solitary water wave observed by John Scott Russell in a barge canal in 1834. It is the prototype for a soliton.
• A soliton, a generalization of the wave of translation to general systems of partial differential equations.
• A topological defect, a generalization of the idea of a soliton to any system which is stable against decay due to homotopy theory.
• The name soliton appears to have been coined by Zabusky and Martin Kruskal. However, the name solitary wave, used in the propagation of non-dispersive energy bundles through discrete and continuous media, irrespective of whether the KdV, sine-Gordon, non-linear Schroedinger, Toda or some other equation is used, is more general.

This disambiguation page lists mathematics articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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