An Optimal Transportation Metric for Solutions of the Camassa-Holm Equation

Abstract

In this paper we construct a global, continuous flow of solutions to the Camassa-Holm equation on the entire space H1. Our solutions are conservative, in the sense that the total energy int[(u2 + u2x) dx] remains a.e. constant in time. Our new approach is based on a distance functional J(u, v), defined in terms of an optimal transportation problem, which satisfies d dtJ(u(t), v(t)) ≤ κ · J(u(t), v(t)) for every couple of solutions. Using this new distance functional, we can construct arbitrary solutions as the uniform limit of multi-peakon solutions, and prove a general uniqueness result.