Operator splitting for partial differential equations with Burgers nonlinearity

We provide a new analytical approach to operator splitting for equations of the type $u_t=Au+u u_x$ where $A$ is a linear differential operator such that the equation is well-posed. Particular examples include the viscous Burgers' equation, the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, the Benney-Lin equation, and the Kawahara equation. We show that the Strang splitting method converges with the expected rate if the initial data are sufficiently regular. In particular, for the KdV equation we obtain second-order convergence in $H^r$ for initial data in $H^{r+5}$ with arbitrary $r\ge 1$.