On the integrability of KdV hierarchy with self-consistent sources (Q1947930)

The article under review studies non-holonomic deformations of integrable equations of the KdV hierarchy by using expansions over the so-called squared eigenfunctions. Such deformations can be viewed as perturbed models with external sources, often being self-consistent. The KdV6 equation is, therefore, a special perturbation of the KdV equation. Applying expansions over the symplectic basis of squared eigenfunctions, the authors analyze integrability properties of the KdV hierarchy with generic self-consistent sources. This allows to formulate a set of conditions on the perturbation terms that preserve integrability. The perturbation corrections to the scattering data and to the corresponding action-angle variables are studied. The analysis shows that there are perturbed equations whose solutions, in principle, cannot be obtained via inverse scattering transform (IST), although many nontrivial solutions of the KdV equations with generic self-consistent sources can be obtained by the IST. The authors finally compute examples of completely integrable equations among the KdV equations with perturbations that preserve time-independently the eigenvalues, and examples of non-completely integrable perturbed equations which preserve soliton solutions but whose perturbed eigenvalue depends explicitly on time. The article provides a detailed description of the inverse scattering theory and it has also plenty of helpful references.