Asymptotics for supersonic soliton propagation in the Toda lattice equation

We study the problem of the adjustment of an initial condition to an exact supersonic soliton solution of the Toda latice equation. Also, we study the problem of soliton propagation in the Toda lattice with slowly varying mass impurities. In both cases we obtain the full numerical solution of the soliton evolution and we develop a modulation theory based on the averaged Lagrangian of the discrete Toda equation. Unlike previous problems with coherent subsonic solutions we need to modify the averaged Lagrangian to obtain the coupling between the supersonic soliton and the subsonic linear radiation. We show how this modified modulation theory explains qualitatively in simple terms the evolution of a supersonic soliton in the presence of impurities. The quantitative agreement between the modulation solution and the numerical result is good.