Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 3 31A Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
With the sign convention of the displayed operator, the Lax equation is . Differentiating shows that is another solution at the same spectral parameter. The normalization at fixessince there. At , comparison of the two plane-wave coefficients givesThus the transmission denominator is time independent. This is the Time evolution of KdV scattering data for the stated normalization.
The logarithmic derivative obeys the Riccati equationIts formal large- expansion givesThere is an important qualification to the integral identity in the question. For real with nonzero reflection, has no limit at , so the literal improper integral of the exact need not exist. Continue to , where the reflected exponential decays relative to , and take sufficiently large away from zeros and with a consistent logarithm. Then the normalization givesThe second equality is an asymptotic expansion, not an asserted convergent series. Time independence of fixes every coefficient, so each is a conserved quantity of the Korteweg-De Vries equation. The first two nontrivial examples are and .
For the usual real-valued KdV potential and real formal , write with real coefficient functions. Its imaginary part of the Riccati equation is , henceIn the formal expansion, contains precisely the even-indexed and the odd-indexed ones. Rapid decay of and its derivatives makes every coefficient of the logarithm vanish at both spatial ends. Therefore . This is a coefficientwise formal identity; it does not claim that the exact real-axis reflected solution has a convergent integral of . The analytically continued scattering identity and the formal expansion are the conventions needed to make the requested argument valid.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 2 33C i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
The Korteweg-De Vries equation is the compatibility condition for the Lax pairFor rapidly decaying initial data, first solve the direct KdV Schrodinger spectral problemComparing its Jost solutions at the two spatial infinities produces the KdV scattering data: the reflection coefficient on the continuous spectrum, discrete eigenvalues , and norming amplitudes for the bound states.
The Lax evolution is isospectral. More precisely, the Time evolution of KdV scattering data isThis is the simple linear evolution that makes the nonlinear initial-value problem tractable.
To invert the data, formSolve the Gelfand-Levitan-Marchenko equationand reconstructDirect scattering at , linear evolution of the data, and this inverse step constitute the inverse scattering transform.