Partial-rogue waves that come from nowhere but leave with a trace in the
Sasa-Satsuma equation
Bo Yang1, Jianke Yang2
1School of Mathematics and Statistics, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
2Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05401, U.S.A
Partial-rogue waves, i.e., waves that “come from nowhere but leave with a trace”, are analytically
predicted and numerically confirmed in the Sasa-Satsuma equation. We show that, among a class of
rational solutions in this equation that can be expressed through determinants of 3-reduced Schur
polynomials, partial-rogue waves would arise if these rational solutions are of certain orders, where
the associated generalized Okamoto polynomials have real but not imaginary roots, or imaginary
but not real roots. We further show that, at large negative time, these partial-rogue waves approach
the constant-amplitude background, but at large positive time, they split into several fundamental
rational solitons, whose numbers are determined by the number of real or imaginary roots in the
underlying generalized Okamoto polynomial. Our asymptotic predictions are compared to true
solutions, and excellent agreement is observed.
I. INTRODUCTION
Rogue waves has been a subject of intensive theoreti-
cal and experimental studies in mathematical and phys-
ical communities in the past decade. Hundreds of pa-
pers and several books have been published on it, and
more are still coming. Rogue waves are often defined
as “waves that come from nowhere and leave without
a trace” [1]. For example, they can be localized wave
excitations that arise from the constant-amplitude back-
ground, reach higher amplitude, and then retreat back
to the same background, as time progresses. Almost all
rogue waves that have been theoretically derived or ex-
perimentally observed belong to this category (see [2–6],
among many others).
However, there exists another type of waves that “come
from nowhere but leave with a trace”. Specifically,
these waves also arise from the constant-amplitude back-
ground (thus “come from nowhere”), stay localized, and
reach higher amplitude. Afterwards, instead of retreat-
ing back to the same constant background with no trace,
they evolve into localized waves on the constant back-
ground that persist at large time, thus leaving a trace.
The first report of such peculiar waves seems to be in
[7] for the Davey-Stewartson-II equation, where a two-
dimensional localized wave arose from the constant back-
ground and then split into two localized lumps at large
time (see Fig. 4 of that paper). Later, a similar but
one-dimensional solution was reported in [8] for the Sasa-
Satsuma equation. These peculiar waves resemble rogue
waves in the first half of evolution, but contrast them in
the second half of evolution. Due to these peculiar be-
haviors, let us call them partial-rogue waves. Note that
although two examples of partial-rogue waves can be seen
in [7, 8], there was no explanation for their appearance, as
if they were pure accidents. It was also unclear whether
additional types of partial-rogue waves could be found in
those two systems.
In this paper, we predict partial-rogue waves in the
Sasa-Satsuma equation through large-time asymptotic
analysis on its rational solutions. We show that, among
a class of rational solutions in this equation that can be
expressed through determinants of 3-reduced Schur poly-
nomials, partial-rogue waves arise if and only if these
rational solutions are of certain orders, where the associ-
ated generalized Okamoto polynomials have real but not
imaginary roots, or imaginary but not real roots. We fur-
ther show that, at large negative time, these partial-rogue
waves approach the constant-amplitude background, but
at large positive time, they split into several fundamen-
tal rational solitons, whose numbers are determined by
the number of real or imaginary roots in the underlying
generalized Okamoto polynomial. Our asymptotic pre-
dictions are compared to true solutions, and excellent
agreement is observed.
II. PRELIMINARIES
The Sasa-Satsuma equation was proposed as a higher-
order nonlinear Sch¨odinger equation for optical pulses
that includes some additional physical effects such
as third-order dispersion and self-steepening [9, 10].
Through a variable transformation, this equation can be
written as
ut=uxxx + 6|u|2ux+ 3u(|u|2)x.(1)
Sasa and Satsuma [9] showed that this equation is inte-
grable.
A. A class of rational solutions
Soliton solutions on the zero background in this equa-
tion were derived by Sasa and Satsuma in their original
paper [9]. Later, rational solutions on a constant back-
ground, including rogue waves, were also derived [8, 11–
19]. The solutions that will be the starting point of this
paper are a certain class of rational solutions which, in
the language of Darboux transformation, are associated
arXiv:2210.03414v1 [nlin.SI] 7 Oct 2022