A novel method for nonlinear fractional differential equations using symbolic computation

In this paper, a new approach, namely an ansatz method is applied to find exact solutions for nonlinear fractional differential equations in the sense of modified Riemann–Liouville derivative. Based on a nonlinear fractional complex transformation, a certain fractional partial differential equation can be turned into another ordinary differential equation of integer order. For illustrating the validity of this method, we apply it to solve the fractional-order biological population model and the space–time fractional modified equal width equation, and as a result, some dark soliton solutions for them are established.