On an isomonodromy deformation equation without the Painlevé property (Q2344136)

The main result of this paper is the demonstration that the following fourth-order ODE, the so called \(P^{(2, 1)}_I\) equation, \[ a'''' + 120 (a')^3a'' - 120 a'a''t - \frac{200}{3} (a')^2 - \frac{40}{3} aa'' + \frac{200}{9}t=0\quad '=\frac{d}{d t} \] controls the isomonodromy deformation problem of a linear ODE system \[ \frac{\partial Z}{\partial \lambda}=\mathcal{A}Z,\quad \frac{\partial Z}{\partial t}=\mathcal{C}Z\tag{*} \] with polynomial coefficients nevertheless it does not have the Painlevé property since its general solution admits movable critical algebraic branch points. In particular, building a 4-parameter Laurent power series solution \[ u(x)=-\frac{1}{(x-a)^2} + \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} c_k\,(x-a)^k \] with \(a=a(t),\,c_k=c_k(t)\) of the \(P^2_I\) equation \[ u_{xxxx} + 10 u^2_x + 20 uu_x + 40 (u^3 - 6 tu + 6 x)=0, \] the authors show that this solution is compatible with the KdV equation \[ u_t + uu_x + \frac{1}{12}u_{xxx}=0 \] if and only if the pole \(a(t)\) must satisfy the \(P^{(2, 1)}_I\) equation. Using the above power series solution \(u(x)\), by a sequence of shearing transformations, the authors regularize the connections \(\partial_x - A, \partial_{\lambda} - B\) and \(\partial_t - C\) along the singularity locus \(x=a(t)\) simultaneously (the condition \([\partial_x - A,\partial_{\lambda} - B]=0\) defines the \(P^2_I\) equation and the condition \([\partial_x - A,\partial_t - C]=0\) defines the KdV equation). It turns out that this regularization yields the linear system \((*)\) for the \(P^{(2, 1)}_I\) equation. As additional results studying the corresponding Riemann-Hilbert (RH) problems, the authors construct a large-\(t\) solution to the RH problem for a special solution (arose in the study of some physical problems) of \(P^2_I\) and \(P^{(2, 1)}_I\) equations applying the steepest-descent asymptotic analysis by \textit{P. Deift} and \textit{X. Zhou} [Ann. Math. (2) 137, No. 2, 295--368 (1993; Zbl 0771.35042)].