Focus on Soliton Research

Since their discovery a mere thirty years ago, solitons have been invoked to explain such diverse phenomena as: The long lived 'giant red spot' in the highly turbulent Jovian atmosphere. The famous Fermi-Pasta-Ulam paradox wherein a nonlinearly coupled lattice of particles does not display the expected equipartition of energy among available modes: ion-acoustic waves in a plasma; energy storage and transfer in proteins via the Davydov soliton; and, the propagation of short laser pulses in optical fibres over long distances with negligible shape change. This volume presents important research from around the globe.