N-fold darboux transformation and bidirectional solitons for whitham-broer-kaup model in shallow water

Under investigation in this paper is the Whitham-Broer-Kaup (WBK) system, which describes the dispersive long wave in shallow water. Through a variable transformation, the WBK system is casted into a general Broer-Kaup system whose Lax pair can be derived by the Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur technology. With symbolic computation, based on the aforementioned Lax pair, the N-fold Darboux transformation is constructed with a gauge transformation and the multi-soliton solutions are obtained. Finally, the elastic interactions of the two-soliton solutions (including the head-on and overtaking collisions) for the WBK system are graphically studied. Those multi-soliton collisions can be used to illustrate the bidirectional propagation of the waves in shallow water.