1. Introduction
Recently, Yan and Lou (2020) [
1] considered new types of soliton molecules in the Sharma–Tasso–Olver–Burgers (STOB) equation:
Clearly, it is the Burgers equation when
. It reduces to the Sharma–Tasso–Olver equation when
. Thus, the STOB equation is an integrable nonlinear evolution equation that is a combination of the well-known Burgers equation and the STO equation. From the point of view of either mathematics or physics (see Olver (1977) [
2], Lian and Lou (2005) [
3], He et al. (2013) [
4], Gomez and Hernandez (2017) [
5], El-Rashidy (2020) [
6] and Li (2019) [
7]), the Burgers system and the Sharma–Tasso–Olver equation have been widely investigated using various effective methods, including the inverse scattering method, Lie group method, Hirota’s bilinear method, etc. Lian and Lou (2005) [
3] used the simple symmetry reduction procedure to obtain infinitely many symmetries and exact solutions with new soliton fission and fusion phenomena for the STO equation. He et al. (2013) [
4] proposed an improved
-expansion method to study the solitons and periodic solutions for the STO equation. El-Rashidy (2020) [
6] used the extension exponential rational function method to deduce the new and general traveling wave solutions for the STO equation and (2 + 1)-dimensional STO equation.
Therefore, it is of important significance to study the structure and properties of these integrable systems (PDEs). In particular, for the STOB equation, Yan and Lou (2020) [
1] investigated soliton molecules and their fission and fusion phenomena by introducing a velocity resonance mechanism. Gomez and Hernandez (2017) [
5] used the improved tanh-coth method, as well as the Exp-function method, to investigate the traveling wave solutions. However, to date, little is known about the geometric structure and dynamic behaviors of the traveling wave solutions of the STOB equation. It is very important to study these properties, which can help us understand the physical meaning and practical applications of the STOB equation.
The aim of this work is twofold. To study the Sharma–Tasso–Olver–Burgers (STOB) equation, we first discuss the geometric properties and exact traveling wave solutions. Second, we implement different first integrals, such as the time-dependent first integral and time-independent first integral, to finish the study of the properties and exact traveling wave solutions.
To study the traveling wave solutions of Equation (
1), we let
and substitute them into Equation (
1). Now, integrating once and letting the integration constant be 0, we have that
where
Note that Equation (
2) is a cubic nonlinear oscillator with damping. It is well known that a cubic nonlinear oscillator with damping can be equivalently changed into a planar dynamical system:
From the perspective of the theory of dynamical systems, it is interesting to study the connection between orbits in phase portraits and exact solutions. Equivalently, it is necessary to study the geometric features of all known exact solutions in greater depth (for examples, see Li (2014) [
8], Li and Zhu (2016) [
9], and Li and Feng (2016) [
10]). Under some parametric conditions, we study the phase portraits of system (3) in this paper and give corresponding parametric representations for all bounded orbits.
We have organized the paper as follows. In
Section 2, system (3) has a time-dependent first integral. We discuss the integrable cubic nonlinear oscillator with damping and present the exact solutions. In
Section 3, system (3) has a time-independent first integral. We discuss the integrable cubic nonlinear oscillator with damping and present the exact solutions.
2. Exact Solutions and Dynamics of System (3) with a Time-Dependent First Integral
In the current section, we study the exact solutions and dynamics of system (3) with a time-dependent first integral. We always assume that , and . In other cases, the study of system (3) is similar.
Clearly, when , we obtain three equilibrium points of system (3) at , and , where with When , there exists one simple equilibrium point and a double equilibrium point When , there exists only one simple equilibrium point
At the equilibrium point
, setting
as the coefficient matrix of the linearized system of (3), we find that
Thus,
In addition,
It is well known from the theory of planar dynamical systems that an equilibrium point of a planar integrable system is (1) a saddle point if , (2) a center point (a node point) if and , or (3) a cusp if and the Poincaré index of the equilibrium point is 0.
Hence, when , we have that (1) the equilibrium point is a stable node point, (2) the equilibrium point is an unstable node point, and (3) the equilibrium point is a saddle point.
Using such a qualitative analysis, we obtain the phase portraits of system (3), which are presented in
Figure 1a–c. Note that we choose the following parameters: (a)
; (b)
; (c)
In
Figure 1, we see that system (3) has infinitely many heteroclinic orbits when
. They connect the two equilibrium points
and
. These orbits lead to a family of kink wave solutions of Equation (
1). In addition, when
there exists a heteroclinic orbit that connects the equilibrium points
and
. There exists a heteroclinic orbit that connects the equilibrium points
and
.
By using the results given by Chandrasekar et al. (2006) [
11], we know that the equation
is an integrable system. Obviously, Equation (
2) is the special case of (4) with
Therefore, when
system (3) possesses the first integral depending on
as follows:
where
When
system (3) has the first integral
Equations (5) and (6) suggest the following result.
Theorem 1. (i) When the exact parametric representation for the orbits of system (3) iswhere and are two arbitrary integral constants. (ii) When the exact parametric representation for the orbits of system (3) is (iii) When the exact parametric representation for the orbits of system (3) iswhere Remark 1. The exact solution (7b) is the correct result, which changes the incorrect Formula (58) in Chandrasekar et al. (2006) [11]. Remark 2.
(1) When and , Equation (7) becomesand When , Equations (10) and (11) lead to two families of monotonic kink wave solutions of system (1) (see Figure 2a). (2) When and , Equation (7) becomes When , Equation (12) leads to a family of monotonic kink wave solutions of system (1) (see Figure 2a). (3) When and Equation (7) can give a family of non-monotonic kink wave solutions (see Figure 2b). The parameters are given as and 3. Exact Solutions and Dynamics of System (3) with a Time-Independent First Integral
In this section, we take
in system (3), i.e., we consider the system
From the results in Chandrasekar et al. (2006) [
11], Mak and Harko (2005) [
12], and Li and Zhu (2016) [
9], we know that system (13) has the first integral
Clearly, system (13) has three equilibrium points: and We write that
From the analysis in
Section 2, for system (13), we have
Hence, under the parameters
and
,
Figure 3 gives the phase portrait of system (13).
Figure 4 gives some figures of the level curves of
We first discuss the level curves defined by
Now, the function
can be written as
Thus, corresponding to the two heteroclinic orbits shown in
Figure 4a, we have two kink wave solutions of Equation (
1):
and
where
Considering the level curves of
together with (14), we see that
can be written as follows when
:
Clearly, the two curves in (19) are heteroclinic orbits, and they connect the equilibrium points
and
(see
Figure 4b).
From the first equation of system (13), the following exact parametric representations are obtained:
where
Now, two monotonic kink wave solutions of system (13) are given by Equation (20).
Now, from
Figure 4c, it can be seen that, for each
, the level curve of
leads to two heteroclinic orbits. They connect the equilibrium points
and
Moreover, one determines a monotonic kink wave solution, and the other determines a non-monotonic kink wave solution of system (13). Therefore, corresponding to all
, the level curves
lead to two families of monotonic and non-monotonic kink wave solutions of system (13), and the number of solutions is uncountably infinite.
With the transformation
we can represent system (13) as the following symmetric form:
with the first integral
For the heteroclinic orbits (see
Figure 4c) defined by
we have
This implies that
where
Now, we consider the two heteroclinic orbits when
. Clearly, the upper arc
intersects with the
—axis at two points,
where
, while the lower arc
intersects with the
—axis at four points:
and
.
Now, from the first equations of systems (21) and (24), the uncountably infinitely many non-monotonic kink wave solutions of system (13) have the following parametric representations (see
Figure 5b):
where
Regarding the lower arc of the level curve
the uncountably infinitely many monotonic kink wave solutions of system (13) have the following parametric representations (see
Figure 5a):
We summarize the findings in the following result.
Theorem 2. Assume that
(i) In the case that the two heteroclinic orbits of system (13) connect the equilibrium points , , , and , Equation (1) has two monotonic kink wave solutions in (17) and (18). (ii) In the case that the two heteroclinic orbits of system (13) connect the equilibrium points and , Equation (1) has two monotonic kink wave solutions in (20). (iii) In the case that the uncountably infinitely many heteroclinic orbits , (, and ) of system (13) connect two node points, and Equation (1) has monotonic kink wave solutions in (26). The number of solutions is uncountably infinite. (iv) In the case that the heteroclinic orbits () connect two node points, and , Equation (1) has non-monotonic kink wave solutions and monotonic kink wave solutions in (25) and (26). The number of solutions is uncountably infinite.