Reduction of Abelian functions and algebraically integrable systems. II (Q1889948)

This second part of the authors' comprehensive survey article contains the remaining Chapters 4 and 5. These chapters focus on more recent developments in the reduction theory of abelian functions and their applications to integrating particular Hamiltonian systems in mathematical and theoretical physics. Chapter 4 discusses an approach to the reduction problem that is based on so-called ``elliptic ansatzes'' and Baker-Akhiezer functions. This method, in its simplest form, was first discovered by Ch. Hermite and G. H. Halphen in the late nineteenth century, when they used a special ``ansatz'' to investigate the Lamé potential, and it has grown into a powerful framework in the late twentieth century. Today this method, in its generalized form, is known as the finite-gap integration method, and its far-reaching elaboration is due to the fundamental works of Novikov and his collaborators, Belokolos and Enolskii, Krichever, Treibich and Verdier, Its and Matveev, A. Smirnov, Gesztesy and Weikard, and many others during the past twenty years. The authors, who themselves contributed a great deal to these developments, describe the method of elliptic reduction of abelian functions systematically and in its historical genesis. In the framework of the problem of elliptic reduction, they study the restriction of the discriminant curve of the Lax operator to the KdV-locus of the Calogero-Moser system, the Lax representation for the restricted flows associated with the two-gap Lamé and Treibich-Verdier potentials, the spectral characteristics of the Lamé equations for low general various third-order spectral problems and their elliptic Akhiezer-Baker functions, the Krichever curve, the Boussinesq equation, and the classical Halphen equation. All this is done in a highly systematic and complete manner, with new explicit formulae and results. The entire survey culminates in Chapter 5, where the authors give numerous applications of the (elliptic) reduction of abelian functions to different problems of mathematical and theoretical physics. From the huge number of such problems in classical mechanics, the spectral theory of the Schrödinger operator, the theory of nonlinear waves, geometrical optics differential geometry, and quantum mechanics, they haven chosen to discuss some of the most interesting classical and more recent examples. This includes the periodic motion of the Kowalevski top in terms of elliptic functions, Lax representations for two-particle systems, integrable cases of the Hénon-Heiles system (1964), elliptic solitary waves, the reduction of two-gap potentials in the Lamé-Treibich-Verdier theory, the reduction for two-dimensional Schrödinger equations, Bloch varieties, and other concrete integrable systems. Due to the many detailed and explicit calculations, the whole exposition is utmost concrete and instructive. All together, this is an excellent and unique report on the subject, its history, and its present state of art, written by two of the leading experts in the field. The treatise is much more than just another survey. In view of its virtual self-containedness, comprehensiveness, rigor, and topicality, this work may be seen as a splendid mixture of a panoramic overview, historical guide, introductory text, research exposition, reference, and invitation to further studies, perhaps even to further research. The extremely rich and up-to-date bibliography is also highly valuable to all kinds of readers. Mathematicians and physicists of different expertise can profit a great deal from this treatise as a whole.