Space curves and solitons of the KP hierarchy. I: The \(l\)-th generalized KdV hierarchy (Q2023429)

The aim of this paper is to identify algebraic curves associated with particular class of soliton solutions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) hierarchy. Recall that the algebra-geometric solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) hierarchy are constructed from the Riemann theta functions associated with hyperelliptic curves, and that soliton solutions can be obtained by rational (singular) limits of the corresponding curves. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a class of KP solitons in connections with space curves, which are labelled by certain types of numerical semigroups. In particular, the authors show that some class of the (singular and complex) KP solitons of the \(l\)-th generalized KdV hierarchy with \(l\geq2\) is related to the rational space curves associated with the numerical semigroup \((l, lm+1,\dots, lm+k)\), where \(m\geq1\) and \(1\leq k\leq l-1\). They also calculate the Schur polynomial expansions of the \(\tau\)-functions for those KP solitons. Moreover, the authors construct smooth curves by deforming the singular curves associated with the soliton solutions. For these KP solitons, they construct the space curve from a commutative ring of differential operators in the sense of the well-known Burchnall-Chaundy theory. This paper is organized as follows. The first section is an introduction to the subject. In the second section the authors define a class of generalized soliton solutions of the KP hierarchy which are defined by further degenerations of the soliton parameters. These solitons are particular solutions of the \(l\)-th generalized KdV hierarchy for some integer \(l\geq2\), which is also referred to as the \(l\)-reduction of the KP hierarchy defined by \(\partial\tau/\partial t_{nl}= c_n\tau\) with some constants \(c_n\) for all \(n=1, 2,\dots\). In particular, they consider the generalized soliton solutions from the center elements of the Schubert cell of the Grassmannian \(Gr(N,M)\). In the third section, the authors briefly review the notion of Sato universal Grassmannian (UGM) and give an explicit embedding of the generalized soliton solutions into UGM. Each soliton solution is then expressed as a point of UGM. In the fourth section, the authors study the numerical semigroups of type \((l, lm + 1, lm + 2,\dots, lm + k)\) for \(m\geq1\) and \(1\leq k\leq l -1\), and present the corresponding Young diagrams, which will be used to parameterize the generalized soliton solutions to the \(l\)-th generalized KdV hierarchy. They give the explicit formulas of the Frobenius number and (arithmetic) genus of these numerical semigroups. In the fifth section, the authors give the main theorem, which states that algebraic curves for the generalized soliton solutions are singular space curve in \(\mathbb{C}^{k+1}\) associated with the numerical semigroup of type \((l, lm + 1,\dots, lm + k)\). This theorem provides the Schur expansions of the corresponding \(\tau\)-function. They present several explicit examples to illustrate the theorem. In the sixth section, the authors give the proof of the above theorem. This section also provides a summary of the main results. In the seventh section, the authors study a deformation of the singular space curve in \(\mathbb{C}^l\) for the soliton solution associated with the numerical semigroup \(S=\langle l, lm + 1,\dots, l(m + 1)-1\rangle\). It is shown that these soliton solutions are obtained by coalescing two moduli parameters of the corresponding smooth curve. The singularity of the singular space curve is an ordinary \(l\)-tuple point singularity and in the case with \(l=2\), i.e., a plane curve, it is an ordinary ``double point'' singularity. As a byproduct, they show that the numerical semigroup of type \((l, lm + 1,\dots, l(m + 1)-1)\) is a Weierstrass semigroup for \(m\geq2\). The authors also give a brief discussion on deformation of singular curves for the generalized soliton solutions associated with the types \((l, lm + 1,\dots, lm + k)\) with \(1\leq k<l-1\). In the eighth section, the authors reconstruct the singular space curves for the soliton solution from the point of view of commutative differential operators as in the work of \textit{J. L. Burchnall} and \textit{T. W. Chaundy} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 21, 420--440 (1923; JFM 49.0311.03)]. The paper is supported by an appendix in which the authors provide a brief overview on the Lax-Sato formulation of the KP hierarchy, the \(l\)-th generalized KdV hierarchy and the soliton solutions.