Interaction of solitary pulses in active dispersive–dissipative media

We examine weak interaction and formation of bound states of pulses for the generalized Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (gKS) equation, which is one of the simplest prototypes describing active media with energy supply, dissipation, dispersion, and nonlinearity. We derive a system of ordinary differential equations describing the leading-order dynamics of the pulses of the gKS equation and prove a criterion for the existence of a countable infinite or finite number of bound states. Our theory is corroborated by computations of the full equation.