Breaking of stationary waves in nonlinear dispersive media

A nontrivial behaviour of a nonlinear wave under influence of small disturbing factors like dissipation, smooth inhomogeneity of medium parameters, etc. is considered by the example of sine-Gordon equation. The stage of slow “adiabatic” variation of the parameters of quasi-stationary wave is shown to change at some finite distance due to strong instability. The wave form becomes essentially nonstationary (breaking of stationary wave structure). The breaking condition is defined by the extremum of the wave adiabatic invariant. The behaviour of a wave at the nonadiabatic stage is described using a Galerkin procedure.