WHAT HAPPENS WITH AN INITIALLY KICKED SOLITON

A simple method to study the response of solitons in overdamped dissip ative systems to external impulsive perturbations is developed. Thanks to the nontrivial choice of a small parameter, the perturbative schem e captures genuine nonlinear phenomena. The method is developed and te sted by numerical simulations for kinks in 1 + 1 dimensions and for sk yrmions in 2 + 1 dimensions. An extension to models including second-o rder time derivatives is also discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V .