Stability of solitary waves and weak rotation limit for the Ostrovsky equation

Ostrovsky equation describes the propagation of long internal and surface waves in shallow water in the presence of rotation. In this model dispersion is taken into account while dissipation is neglected. Existence and nonexistence of localized solitary waves is classified according to the sign of the dispersion parameter (which can be either positive or negative). It is proved that for the case of positive dispersion the set of solitary waves is stable with respect to perturbations. The issue of passing to the limit as the rotation parameter tends to zero for solutions of the Cauchy problem is investigated on a bounded time interval. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.