Weakly nonlinear dispersive waves: group velocity

For slowly varying wave trains in a linear system, it is known that a quantity proportional to the square of the amplitude propagates with the group velocity. It is shown here, by considering a specific problem of longitudinal waves in a hot electron-plasma and using an asymptotic analysis, that this result continues to be valid even when weak nonlinearities are introduced into the system provided they produce slowly varying wave trains. The method of analysis fails, however, for weakly nonlinear ion-acoustic waves.