%0 Journal Article %J Proc. R. Soc. A 464 (2008) 733-757 %D 2008 %T Numerical study of a multiscale expansion of the Korteweg-de Vries equation and Painlevé-II equation %A Tamara Grava %A Christian Klein %X The Cauchy problem for the Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equation with small dispersion of order $\\\\e^2$, $\\\\e\\\\ll 1$, is characterized by the appearance of a zone of rapid modulated oscillations. These oscillations are approximately described by the elliptic solution of KdV where the amplitude, wave-number and frequency are not constant but evolve according to the Whitham equations. Whereas the difference between the KdV and the asymptotic solution decreases as $\\\\epsilon$ in the interior of the Whitham oscillatory zone, it is known to be only of order $\\\\epsilon^{1/3}$ near the leading edge of this zone. To obtain a more accurate description near the leading edge of the oscillatory zone we present a multiscale expansion of the solution of KdV in terms of the Hastings-McLeod solution of the Painlev\\\\\\\'e-II equation. We show numerically that the resulting multiscale solution approximates the KdV solution, in the small dispersion limit, to the order $\\\\epsilon^{2/3}$. %B Proc. R. Soc. A 464 (2008) 733-757 %G en_US %U http://hdl.handle.net/1963/2592 %1 1530 %2 Mathematics %3 Mathematical Physics %$ Submitted by Andrea Wehrenfennig (andreaw@sissa.it) on 2008-02-25T15:08:44Z\\nNo. of bitstreams: 1\\n0708.0638v3.pdf: 453744 bytes, checksum: 05291095860df236125f0d9f8c676fbb (MD5) %R 10.1098/rspa.2007.0249