Generalized extended tanh-function method and its application

In this paper, a new generalized extended tanh-function method is presented for constructing soliton-like, period-form solutions of nonlinear evolution equations (NEEs). Compared with most of the existing tanh-function method, extended tanh-function method, the modified extended tanh-function method and generalized hyperbolic-function method, the proposed method is more powerful. By using this method, we not only can successfully recover the previously known formal solutions but also construct new and more general formal solutions for some NEEs. Make use of the method, we study the (3 + 1)-dimensional potential-YTSF equation and obtain rich new families of the exact solutions, including the non-travelling wave and coefficient functions’ soliton-like solutions, singular soliton-like solutions, periodic form solutions.