Abstract
In this paper,we investigate the Cauchy problem of the Sasa-Satsuma(SS)equation with initial data belonging to the Schwartz space.The SS equation is one of the integrable higher-order extensions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and admits a 3 × 3 Lax representation.With the aid of the(∂)-nonlinear steepest descent method of the mixed(∂)-Riemann-Hilbert problem,we give the soliton resolution and long-time asymptotics for the Cauchy problem of the SS equation with the existence of second-order discrete spectra in the space-time solitonic regions.