Classification of the line-soliton solutions of KPII

In the previous papers (notably, Kodama Y 2004 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37 11169-90, Biondini G and Chakravarty S 2006 J. Math. Phys. 47 033514), a large variety of line-soliton solutions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili II (KPII) equation was found. The line-soliton solutions are solitary waves which decay exponentially in the (x, y)-plane except along certain rays. In this paper, it is shown that those solutions are classified by asymptotic information of the solution as |y| -> infinity. The present work then unravels some interesting relations between the line-soliton classification scheme and classical results in the theory of permutations.