Soliton time delay ($\Delta t=-\Delta x/v$)

If a labeled soliton approaches $x=vt+a_{-}$ before a collision and $x=vt+a_{+}$ afterwards, its spatial shift is $\Delta x=a_{+}-a_{-}$. For $v\ne 0$, define its time delay at a fixed spatial point by $\Delta t=-\Delta x/v$. Thus a positive forward shift of a right-moving soliton is a negative time delay. For a stationary soliton, the spatial shift is well defined but this time-delay definition is not.

A narrow outgoing energy packet has phase $-ET/\hslash +\delta (E)$, so stationary phase gives the arrival shift $\Delta T=\hslash {\delta }^{\prime }(E)$. For two equal-mass solitons with relative rapidity $\theta$, $E=2\mathcal{M}\cosh (\theta /2)$. The convention $S=e^{2i{\delta }_{\mathrm{pw}}}$ instead gives $2\hslash {\delta }_{\mathrm{pw}}^{\prime }=\Delta T$. Classical time delays determine only the energy-dependent phase difference, not its constant branch.

A many-soliton spatial shift is pairwise additive when $\Delta x_i={\sum }_{j\ne i}\Delta x_{i|j}$. In the all-kink sector of Sine-Gordon theory, $\Delta x_{i|j}=-\mathrm{sgn}(v_i-v_j)\log {\tanh }^2[({\theta }_i-{\theta }_j)/2]/\cosh {\theta }_i$. Dominant spectator exponentials in the Sine-Gordon multisoliton tau representation multiply the effective exponential of kink $i$, so their logarithms add. This is a classical signature of factorized scattering, with no independent many-body contribution to the asymptotic shift.