The (1+1)-dimensional higher-order Broer—Kaup (HBK) system is studied by consistent tanh expansion (CTE) method in this paper. It is proved that the HBK system is CTE solvable, and some exact interaction solutions among different nonlinear excitations such as solitons, rational waves, periodic waves, corresponding images are explicitly given.

Starting from the Lax pairs, the nonlocal symmetries of the coupled variable-coefficient Newell-Whitehead system are obtained. By introducing an appropriate auxiliary dependent variable, the nonlocal symmetries are localized to Lie point symmetries and the coupled variable-coefficient Newell-Whitehead system is extended to an enlarged system with the auxiliary variable. Then the finite symmetry transformation for the prolonged system is found by solving the initial-value problems. Furthermore, by applying symmetry reduction method to the enlarged system, two kinds of the group invariant solutions are given.