Existence and Orbital Stability of Solitary-Wave Solutions for Higher-Order BBM Equations

Abstract

This paper discusses the existence and stability of solitary-wave solutions of a general higher-order Benjamin-Bona-Mahony (BBM) equation, which involves pseudo-differential operators for the linear part. One of such equations can be derived from water-wave problems as second-order approximate equations from fully nonlinear governing equations. Under some conditions on the symbols of pseudo-differential operators and the nonlinear terms, it is shown that the general higher-order BBM equation has solitary-wave solutions. Moreover, under slightly more restrictive conditions, the set of solitary-wave solutions is orbitally stable. Here, the equation has a nonlinear part involving the polynomials of solution and its derivatives with different degrees (not homogeneous), which has not been studied before. Numerical stability and instability of solitary-wave solutions for some special fifth-order BBM equations are also given.