TY - RPRT T1 - On critical behaviour in systems of Hamiltonian partial differential equations Y1 - 2013 A1 - Boris Dubrovin A1 - Tamara Grava A1 - Christian Klein A1 - Antonio Moro AB -

We study the critical behaviour of solutions to weakly dispersive Hamiltonian systems considered as perturbations of elliptic and hyperbolic systems of hydrodynamic type with two components. We argue that near the critical point of gradient catastrophe of the dispersionless system, the solutions to a suitable initial value problem for the perturbed equations are approximately described by particular solutions to the Painlev\'e-I (P$_I$) equation or its fourth order analogue P$_I^2$. As concrete examples we discuss nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations in the semiclassical limit. A numerical study of these cases provides strong evidence in support of the conjecture.

PB - SISSA U1 - 7280 U2 - Mathematics U4 - 1 U5 - MAT/07 FISICA MATEMATICA ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Thermodynamic phase transitions and shock singularities JF - Proc. R. Soc. A 8 March 2012 vol. 468 no. 2139 701-719 Y1 - 2012 A1 - Giuseppe De Nittis A1 - Antonio Moro AB - We show that under rather general assumptions on the form of the entropy\\r\\nfunction, the energy balance equation for a system in thermodynamic equilibrium is equivalent to a set of nonlinear equations of hydrodynamic type. This set of equations is integrable via the method of the characteristics and it provides the equation of state for the gas. The shock wave catastrophe set identifies the phase transition. A family of explicitly solvable models of\\r\\nnon-hydrodynamic type such as the classical plasma and the ideal Bose gas are\\r\\nalso discussed. PB - The Royal Society UR - http://hdl.handle.net/1963/6090 U1 - 5978 U2 - Mathematics U3 - Mathematical Physics U4 - -1 ER -