Highest weight modules over the \(W_{1+\infty}\) algebra and the bispectral problem (Q1974813)

The paper reveals a connection between two previous results of the same authors in the so-called bispectral problem: what are the pairs of ordinary differential operators having common eigenfunctions? The latter problem arises in particular in soliton theory. The starting point is the Bessel wave function \(\Psi _\beta (x,z)\) depending only on \(x\) and \(z\) and satisfying the spectral problem \(L_\beta \Psi _\beta =z^N\Psi _\beta \) for an \(N\)-th order ordinary differential operator (generalized Bessel operator) \[ L_\beta =x^{-N}(D_x-\beta _1)\cdots (D_x-\beta _N),\quad D_x=x\partial _x,\quad \beta=(\beta _1,\ldots ,\beta _N)\in\mathbb{C}^N \] with the condition \(\sum _{i=1}^N\beta _i=\frac{N(N-1)}{2}\). Derivatives of \(\Psi _\beta \) form a basis in the Bessel plane \(V_\beta\), lying in the vector space of formal series \(V\). In a previous paper the authors introduced the notion of monomial Darboux transformation as an action of a specially constructed polynomial ordinary differential operator on this set \(V_\beta \) of Bessel wave functions and proved that the resulting wave functions are bispectral. An open question was: what are the conditions for subsets of \(V\) to be images of monomial Darboux transformation of Bessel planes? The present work establishes another description of such \(V_\beta \) (through corresponding \(\tau \)-functions connected with the planes of \(V\)). Namely it reads (two lemmas and Theorem 2.1): a \(\tau\)-function is a monomial Darboux transformation of a Bessel \(\tau \)-function if and only if it belongs to one of the modules \(M_\beta\). These modules \(M_\beta \) (studied by the authors in 1996) are representations of the Lie algebra \(W_{1+\infty }\) , which is the unique central extension of the Lie algebra of regular polynomial differential operators on the circle. This bridge between representation theory and the bispectral problem is a new result which made it possible to derive here some new consequences along with better explanation of already known facts. A number of questions arising from the obtained results are posed. The work has a useful and rich list of references.