Novel interactions between solitons of the (2+1)-dimensional dispersive long wave equation

In this paper, first, the general projective Riccati equation method is applied to derive variable separation solutions of the (2 + 1)-dimensional dispersive long wave equation. By further studying, we find that these variable separation solutions obtained by PREM, which seem independent, actually depend on each other. Based on variable separation solution and by selecting appropriate multivalued functions, novel interactions among special bell-like semi-foldon, special peakon-like semi-foldon and foldon are investigated. Furthermore, the explicit phase shifts for all the local excitations offered by the common formula have been given, and are applied to these novel interactions in detail. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.