Properties of soliton-soliton collisions

Abstract

The amplitude dependence of the phase shift originating in an overtaking soliton-soliton collision is investigated for solitons that can be described with a Korteweg--de Vries equation and a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. The size dependence of the interaction regime is also amplitude dependent. Laboratory and numerical experiments are compared with a simple model for the elastic collision.