Asymptotic Stability for KdV Solitons in Weighted $H^s$ Spaces

Abstract

In this work, we consider the stability of solitons for the KdV equation below the energy space, using spatially-exponentially-weighted norms. Using a combination of the $I$-method and spectral analysis following Pego and Weinstein, we are able to show that, in the exponentially weighted space, the perturbation of a soliton decays exponentially for arbitrarily long times. The finite time restriction is due to a lack of global control of the unweighted perturbation.