Periodic waves in the fractional Korteweg-de Vries equation have been previously characterized as constrained minimizers of energy subject to fixed momentum and mass. Here we characterize these periodic waves as constrained minimizers of the quadratic form of energy subject to fixed cubic part of energy and the zero mean. This new variational characterization allows us to unfold the existence region of travelling periodic waves and to give a sharp criterion for spectral stability of periodic waves with respect to perturbations of the same period. The sharp stability criterion is given by the monotonicity of the map from the wave speed to the wave momentum similarly to the stability criterion for solitary waves.2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. 76B25, 35Q51, 35Q53.

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Dynamics of viscous shocks is considered in the modular Burgers equation, where the time evolution becomes complicated due to singularities produced by the modular nonlinearity. We prove that the viscous shocks are asymptotically stable under odd and general perturbations. For the odd perturbations, the proof relies on the reduction of the modular Burgers equation to a linear diffusion equation on a half-line. For the general perturbations, the proof is developed by converting the time-evolution problem to a system of linear equations coupled with a nonlinear equation for the interface position. Exponential weights in space are imposed on the initial data of general perturbations in order to gain the asymptotic decay of perturbations in time. We give numerical illustrations of asymptotic stability of the viscous shocks under general perturbations.

Periodic waves of the modified Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV) equation are identified in the context of a new variational problem with two constraints. The advantage of this variational problem is that its non-degenerate local minimizers are stable in the time evolution of the mKdV equation, whereas the saddle points are unstable. We explore the analytical representation of periodic waves given by Jacobi elliptic functions and compute numerically critical points of the constrained variational problem. A broken pitchfork bifurcation of three smooth solution families is found. Two families represent (stable) minimizers of the constrained variational problem and one family represents (unstable) saddle points.