The interaction of long and short waves in dispersive media

The KdV equation models the propagation of long waves in dispersive media, while the NLS equation models the dynamics of narrow-bandwidth wave packets consisting of short dispersive waves. A system that couples the two equations to model the interaction of long and short waves is mathematically attractive and such a system has been studied over the last decades. We evaluate the validity of this system as a physical model, discussing two main problems. First, only the system coupling the linear Schrodinger equation with KdV has been derived in the literature. Second, the time variables appearing in the equations are of a different order. It appears that in the manuscripts that study the coupled NLS-KdV system, an assumption has been made that the coupled system can be derived, justifying its mathematical study. In fact, this is true even for the papers where the asymptotic derivation with the problems described above is presented. In addition to discussing these inconsistencies, we present an alternative system describing the interaction of long and short waves.