Newton-conjugate-gradient methods for solitary wave computations

In this paper, the Newton-conjugate-gradient methods are developed for solitary wave computations. These methods are based on Newton iterations, coupled with conjugate-gradient iterations to solve the resulting linear Newton-correction equation. When the linearization operator is self-adjoint, the preconditioned conjugate-gradient method is proposed to solve this linear equation. If the linearization operator is non-self-adjoint, the preconditioned biconjugate-gradient method is proposed to solve the linear equation. The resulting methods are applied to compute both the ground states and excited states in a large number of physical systems such as the two-dimensional NLS equations with and without periodic potentials, the fifth-order KdV equation, and the fifth-order KP equation. Numerical results show that these proposed methods are faster than the other leading numerical methods, often by orders of magnitude. In addition, these methods are very robust and always converge in all the examples being tested. Furthermore, they are very easy to implement. It is also shown that the nonlinear conjugate gradient methods are not robust and inferior to the proposed methods.