Equivalence of formulations of the MKP hierarchy and its polynomial tau-functions (Q1783371)

The aim of this paper is to show that a system of Hirota bilinear equations introduced by Jimbo and Miwa defines tau-functions of the modified KP (MKP) hierarchy of evolution equations introduced by Dickey. Some other equivalent definitions of the MKP hierarchy are established. All polynomial tau-functions of the KP and the MKP hierarchies are found. Similar results are obtained for the reduced KP and MKP hierarchies. This paper is organized as follows: The first section is an introduction to the subject. Section 2 and 3 concern the fermionic formulation of MKP and the bosonic formulation of MKP. Section 4 is devoted to the equivalence study of Jimbo-Miwa's tau-function formulation and Dickey's Lax type formulation of the MKP hierarchy, in analogy with the well developed theory of the KP hierarchy ([\textit{M. Jimbo} and \textit{T. Miwa}, Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 19, 943--1001 (1983; Zbl 0557.35091)]). In Section 5, the authors give eigenfunction formulations of the MKP hierarchy, closely related to the work [\textit{G. F. Helminck} and \textit{J. W. van de Leur}, Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 37, No. 4, 479--519 (2001; Zbl 1028.37043)]. In Section 6, they find an astonishingly simple explicit description of all polynomial tau-functions of the KP and the MKP hierarchies. In Section 7, the authors discuss the reductions of the MKP hierarchy to the modified \(n\)-KdV hierarchies for each integer \(n\geq2\), the \(n=2\) case being the classical modified KdV hierarchy. In Section 8, they find all polynomial tau-functions for the \(n\)-KdV hierarchy, and implicitly for the modified \(n\)-KdV hierarchy.