Soliton solutions and nontrivial scattering in an integrable chiral model in (2+1) dimensions

The behavior of solitons in integrable theories is strongly constrained by the integrability of the theory; i.e., by the existence of an infinite number of conserved quantities that these theories are known to possess. One usually expects the scattering of solitons in such theories to be rather simple, i.e., trivial. By contrast, in this paper we generate new soliton solutions for the planar integrable chiral model whose scattering properties are highly nontrivial; more precisely, in head-on collisions of N indistinguishable solitons the scattering angle (of the emerging structures relative to the incoming ones) is pi/N. We also generate soliton-antisoliton solutions with elastic scattering; in particular, a head-on collision of a soliton and an antisoliton resulting in 90 degrees scattering. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.