From PDEs to Pfaffian fibrations (Q2032795)

This paper is an elegant survey of the formal theory of partial differential equations. The authors use their own notation and terminology, but not far from that of the literature. They move from conceiving of a system of partial differential equations as a subset of a jet bundle to conceiving of it as a subbundle of the tangent bundle of a manifold, and finally apply the notion of Cartan form to conceive of it as a \(1\)-form valued in a vector bundle. They explain the Cartan-Kähler theorem, Goldschmidt's proof of local solvability for Spencer 2-acyclic systems, and the concepts of prolongation, integral elements, formal solvability, and linearity. They also describe the well known applications to Lie pseudogroups and geometric structures.