Painlevé XXXIV asymptotics for the defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a finite-genus algebro-geometric background

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the Cauchy problem for the defocusing nonlinear Schr$\ddot{\text{o}}$dinger equation with a finite genus algebro-geometric background. Long-time asymptotics of the solution are derived in four space-time regions. It comes out that the leading-order term in the expansion is, up to a constant, given by the background solution with a shift of the parameter. The subleading term, however, decays at different rates for different regions. We particularly highlight that in the two transition regions, they are of order $\mathcal{O}(t^{-1/3})$ and the coefficients involve an integral of the Painlevé XXXIV transcendent. We establish our results by applying a nonlinear steepest descent analysis to the associated Riemann-Hilbert problems.