Solitons from a direct point of view: padeons

A systematic approach to soliton interaction is presented in terms of a particular class of solitary waves (padeons) which are linear fractions with respect to the nonlinearity parameter ϵ. A straightforward generalization of the padeon to higher order rational fractions (multipadeon) yields a natural ansatz for N-soliton solutions. This ansatz produces multisoliton formulas in terms of an ‘interaction matrix’ A. The structure of the matrix gives some insight into the hidden IST-properties of a familiar set of ‘integrable’ equations (KdV, Boussinesq, MKdV, sine-Gordon, nonlinear Schrödinger). The analysis suggests a ‘padeon’ working definition of the soliton, leading to an explicit set of necessary conditions on the padeon equation.