Looped cotangent Virasoro algebra and nonlinear integrable systems in dimension \(2+1\) (Q2384761)

How to generalize the famous Virasoro algebra to the case of several variables, is an interesting question which was considered many times in the literature under different viewpoints. In this paper, the authors are motivated by desire to obtain various versions of the Kadomtsev--Petviashvili equation as appropriate Euler equations. To this aim, they propose a \(2\)-variable generalization as a central extension of the loop algebra over Lie algebras closely related to the initial Virasoro algebra. It is known that all central extensions of the loop algebra of the general form \(L \otimes A\) are reduced to those obtained from the central extensions of the Lie algebra \(L\) (dubbed by authors as ``Virasoro type'') and those obtained from symmetric invariant bilinear forms on \(L\) and the first-order cyclic cohomology of an associative commutative algebra \(A\) (dubbed by authors as ``Kac-Moody type''). As the Kadomtsev--Petviashvili equations contain two different central charges, one of them has to be of the Kac-Moody type. First the authors consider the loop algebra over the Virasoro algebra itself, but this algebra has central extensions of the Virasoro type only. Then they consider the loop algebra over the semidirect product of the Virasoro algebra and its dual. This loop algebra has central extensions both of Virasoro and Kac-Moody types. Then they compute several Euler equations corresponding to the latter Lie algebra. These Euler equations turn out to be closely related to the Kadomtsev--Petviashvili equations. Superization of this situation is also considered, and the corresponding bi-hamiltonian hierarchies are computed. Note that at an least algebraic counterpart of the question raised by the authors in the appendix about the second cohomology of the Lie algebra of vector fields collinear to a given vector field, is solved by \textit{S. Skryabin} in [Lobachevskii J. Math. 14, 69--107 (2004; Zbl 1044.17012)].