Exotic interactions between solitons of the (2+1)-dimensional asymmetric Nizhnik--Novikov--Veselov system

Starting from the extended tanh-function method (ETM) based on the mapping method, the variable separation solutions of the (2+1)-dimensional asymmetric Nizhnik--Novikov--Veselov (ANNV) system are derived. By further study, we find that these variable separation solutions are seemingly independent of but actually dependent on each other. Based on the variable separation solution and by choosing appropriate functions, some novel and interesting interactions between special solitons, such as bell-like compacton, peakon-like compacton and compacton-like semi-foldon, are investigated.