Abstract
The two variables -expansion method is proposed in this paper to construct new exact traveling wave solutions with parameters of the nonlinear -dimensional Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation. This method can be considered as an extension of the basic -expansion method obtained recently by Wang et al. When the parameters are replaced by special values, the well-known solitary wave solutions and the trigonometric periodic solutions of this equation were rediscovered from the traveling waves.
1. Introduction
In the recent years, investigations of exact solutions to nonlinear PDEs play an important role in the study of nonlinear physical phenomena. Many powerful methods have been presented, such as the inverse scattering transform method [1], the Hirota method [2], the truncated Painlevรฉ expansion method [3โ6], the Backlund transform method [7, 8], the exp-function method [9โ14], the tanh function method [15โ18], the Jacobi elliptic function expansion method [19โ21], the original -expansion method [22โ33], the two variables -expansion method [34, 35], and the first integral method [36]. The key idea of the original -expansion method is that the exact solutions of nonlinear PDEs can be expressed by a polynomial in one variable in which satisfies the second ordinary differential equation , where and are constants. In this paper, we will use the two variables -expansion method, which can be considered as an extension of the original -expansion method. The key idea of the two variables -expansion method is that the exact traveling wave solutions of nonlinear PDEs can be expressed by a polynomial in the two variables and , in which satisfies a second order linear ODE, namely, , where and are constants. The degree of this polynomial can be determined by considering the homogeneous balance between the highest order derivatives and nonlinear terms in the given nonlinear PDEs, while the coefficients of this polynomial can be obtained by solving a set of algebraic equations resulted from the process of using the method. According to Aslan [29], the two variables -expansion method becomes the basic -expansion method if in (2.1) and in (2.12). Recently, Li et al. [34] have applied the two variables -expansion method and determined the exact solutions of the Zakharov equations, while Zayed and abdelaziz [35] have applied this method to determine the exact solutions of the nonlinear KdV-mKdV equation.
The objective of this paper is to apply the two variables -expansion method to find the exact traveling wave solutions of the following nonlinear (3+1)-dimensional Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation: This equation describes the dynamics of solitons and nonlinear wave in plasma and superfluids. Recently, Zayed [24] has found the exact solutions of (1.1) using the original -expansion method, while Aslan [14] has discussed (1.1) using the exp-function method. Comparison between our results and that obtained in [14, 24] will be discussed later. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the description of the two variables -expansion method is given. In Section 3, we apply this method to (1.1). In Section 4, conclusions are obtained.
2. Description of the Two Variables -Expansion Method
Before we describe the main steps of this method, we need the following remarks (see [34, 35]).
Remark 2.1. If we consider the second order linear ODE and set and , then we get
Remark 2.2. If , then the general solutions of (2.1) is where and are arbitrary constants. Consequently, we have where .
Remark 2.3. If , then the general solutions of (2.1) is and hence where .
Remark 2.4. If , then the general solutions of (2.1) is and hence
Suppose we have the following NLPDEs in the form: where is a polynomial in and its partial derivatives. In the following, we give the main steps of the two variables -expansion method [34, 35].
Step 1. The traveling wave variable reduces (2.9) to an ODE in the form where is a constant and is a polynomial in and its total derivatives, while .
Step 2. Suppose that the solutions of (2.11) can be expressed by a polynomial in the two variables and as follows: where and are constants to be determined later.
Step 3. Determine the positive integer in (2.12) by using the homogeneous balance between the highest order derivatives and the nonlinear terms in (2.11).
Step 4. Substitute (2.12) into (2.11) along with (2.2) and (2.4), the left-hand side of (2.11) can be converted into a polynomial in and , in which the degree of is not longer than 1. Equating each coefficients of this polynomial to zero yields a system of algebraic equations which can be solved by using the Maple or Mathematica to get the values of , and where . Thus, we get the exact solutions in terms of the hyperbolic functions.
Step 5. Similar to Step 4, substitute (2.12) into (2.11) along with (2.2) and (2.6) for (or (2.2) and (2.8) for , we obtain the exact solutions of (2.11) expressed by trigonometric functions (or by rational functions), respectively.
3. An Application
In this section, we apply the method described in Section 2, to find the exact traveling wave solutions of the nonlinear (3+1)-dimensional Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation (1.1). To this end, we see that the traveling wave variables reduce (1.1) to the following ODE: Balancing with in (3.1) we get . Consequently, we get where , and are constants to be determined later. There are three cases to be discussed as follows.
Case 1. Hyperbolic function solutions .
If , substituting (3.2) into (3.1) and using (2.2) and (2.4), the left-hand side of (3.1) becomes a polynomial in and . Setting the coefficients of this polynomial to zero yields a system of algebraic equations in , and which can be solved by using the Maple or Mathematica to find the following results:
From (2.3), (3.2), and (3.3), we deduce the traveling wave solution of (1.1) as follows:
where
In particular, by setting and in (3.4), we have the solitary solution
where , while if , and , then we have the solitary solution
Case 2. Trigonometric function solutions .
If , substituting (3.2) into (3.1) and using (2.2) and (2.6), we get a polynomial in and . Vanishing each coefficient of this polynomial to get the algebraic equations which can be solved by using the Maple or Mathematica to find the following results:
From (2.5), (3.2), and (3.8), we deduce the traveling wave solution of (1.1) as follows:
where has the same form (3.5).
In particular, by setting , and in (3.9), we have the periodic solution
while if , and , then we have the periodic solution
Case 3. Rational function solutions .
If , substituting (3.2) into (3.1) and using (2.2) and (2.8), we get a polynomial in and . Setting each coefficients of this polynomial to be zero to get the algebraic equations which can be solved by using the Maple or Mathematica to find the following results:
From (2.7), (3.2), and (3.12), we deduce the traveling wave solution of (1.1) as follows:
where
Remark 3.1. All solutions of this paper have been checked with Maple by putting them back into the original equation (1.1).
4. Conclusions
The two variables -expansion method has been used in this paper to discuss (1.1) and obtain the exact traveling wave solutions (3.4), (3.9), and (3.13) of Section 3. As the two parameters and take special values, we obtain the solitary wave solutions (3.6) and (3.7) and the trigonometric periodic solutions (3.10) and (3.11). On comparing these solutions with the result (11) of [14] obtained by Aslan using the exp-function method as well as the results โ of [24] obtained by Zayed using the basic -expansion method, we conclude that all these solutions of (1.1) are different and satisfying that equation. The advantage of the two variables -expansion method over the basic -expansion method is that the first method is an extension of the second one.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank the referee for his suggestions and comments.