Panayotis G. Kevrekidis – författare

This book presents a careful selection of the most important developments of the \phi^4 model, offering a judicious summary of this model with a view to future prospects and the challenges ahead. 

Over the past four decades, the \phi^4 model has been the basis for a broad array of developments in the physics and mathematics of nonlinear waves. From kinks to breathers, from continuum media to discrete lattices, from collisions of solitary waves to spectral properties, and from deterministic to stochastic models of \phi^4 (and \phi^6, \phi^8, \phi^12 variants more recently), this dynamical model has served as an excellent test bed for formulating and testing the ideas of nonlinear science and solitary waves.

This book explores the impact of nonlinearity on a broad range of areas, including time-honored fields such as biology, geometry, and topology, but also modern ones such as quantum mechanics, networks, metamaterials and artificial intelligence. The concept of nonlinearity is a universal feature in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, and is used to characterize systems whose behavior does not amount to a superposition of simple building blocks, but rather features complex and often chaotic patterns and phenomena. Each chapter of the book features a synopsis that not only recaps the recent progress in each field but also charts the challenges that lie ahead.   

This book explores the role of fractional calculus and associated partial differential equations in modeling multiscale phenomena and overlapping macroscopic & microscopic scales, offering an innovative and powerful tool for modeling complex systems. While integer order PDEs have a long-standing history, the novel setting of fractional PDEs opens up new possibilities for the simulation of multi-physics phenomena. The book examines a range of releavant examples that showcase the seamless transition from wave propagation to diffusion or from local to non-local dynamics in both continuum and discrete systems. These systems have been argued as being particularly relevant in contexts such as nonlinear optics, lattice nonlinear dynamical systems, and dispersive nonlinear wave phenomena, where the exploration of the potential fractionality has emerged as a highly active topic for current studies.

The volume consists of contributions from a diverse group of active scholars and expertsacross different fields, providing a detailed examination of the field''s past, present, and future state-of-the-art in the interplay of fractional PDEs and nonlinear wave phenomena. It is intended to be of wide interest to both seasoned researchers and beginners in the Field of Nonlinear Science. This book sets the stage for the next decade of research and beyond and is a timely and relevant reference of choice for this crucial junction of current research.