Long-time asymptotics of the coupled nonlinear Schödinger equation in a weighted Sobolev space

Abstract: We study the Cauchy problem for the focusing coupled nonlinear Schr\"odinger (CNLS) equation with initial data $\mathbf{q}_0$ lying in the weighted Sobolev space and the scattering data having $n$ simple zeros. Based on the corresponding $3\times3$ matrix spectral problem, we deduce the Riemann-Hilbert problem (RHP) for CNLS equation through inverse scattering transform. We remove discrete spectrum of initial RHP using Darboux transformations. By applying the nonlinear steepest-descent method for RHP introduced by Deift and Zhou, we compute the long-time asymptotic expansion of the solution $\mathbf{q}(x,t)$ to an (optimal) residual error of order $\mathcal{O}\left(t^{-3 / 4+1/(2p)}\right)$ where $2\le p<\infty$. The leading order term in this expansion is a multi-soliton whose parameters are modulated by soliton-soliton and soliton-radiation interactions. Our work strengthens and extends the earlier work regarding long-time asymptotics for solutions of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with a delta potential and even initial data by Deift and Park.