NLS breathers, rogue waves, and solutions of the Lyapunov equation for Jordan blocks

The infinite families of Peregrine, Akhmediev and Kuznetsov-Ma breather solutions of the focusing Nonlinear Schroedinger (NLS) equation are obtained via a matrix version of the Darboux transformation, with a spectral matrix of the form of a Jordan block. The structure of these solutions is essentially determined by the corresponding solution of the Lyapunov equation. In particular, regularity follows from properties of the Lyapunov equation.