Virasoro and KdV (Q2397390)

This paper studies the structure of representations of the positive half of the Virasoro algebra. For a finite dimensional vector space \(A\) and non-degenerate bilinear form \((\phantom{ },\phantom{ })\), we can associate its Heisenberg algebra \(\mathbb{H}\), with universal enveloping algebra \(\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{H})\). Let \(\mathcal{W}_>\) be the positive part of the Virasoro algebra, which contains \(\mathfrak{sl}(2)\) canonically. The first non-trivial result of this paper is to show that, under some homogeneity condition, there is a canonical bijection \(\mathrm{Hom}_{\mathrm{Lie}}(\mathcal{W}_>,\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{H}))\cong \mathrm{Hom}_{\mathrm{Lie}}(\mathfrak{sl}(2),\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{H}))\) and that a map \(\mathcal{W}_>\to\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{H})\) decomposes as a tensor product of Lie algebra representations iff the restriction to \(\mathfrak{sl}(2)\) does so too. This is then applied to integrable hierarchies, such as multicomponent KdV, with a particular focus on the differential operators appearing in the Virasoro conjecture -- an important statement in the theory of Gromov-Witten invariants. In this case, \(A\) is the cohomology ring of a smooth projective variety \(X\) with Poincaré pairing \((\phantom{ },\phantom{ })\) and trivial odd cohomology groups, here with vanishing first Chern class. Using the general machinery, the representation defining the Virasoro constraints is shown to decompose as the product of one dimensional representations and solutions in the one dimensional case are discussed.