Solitary waves and their linear stability in weakly coupled KdV equations

We consider a system of weakly coupled KdV equations developed initially by Gear & Grimshaw to model interactions between long waves. We prove the existence of a variety of solitary wave solutions, some of which are not constrained minimizers. We show that such solutions are always linearly unstable. Moreover, the nature of the instability may be oscillatory and as such provides a rigorous justification for the numerically observed phenomenon of “leapfrogging.”