Canonical structure and symmetries of the Schlesinger equations (Q2472451)

The Schlesinger equations \(S_{(n,m)}\) appear in the theory of isomonodromic deformations of Fuchsian systems. The monodromy matrices of the Fuchsian system \[ \frac{d}{dz}=\sum_{i=1}^n \frac{A_k(u)}{z-u_k}\Phi,\qquad z\in \mathbb C \setminus\{u_1,\ldots,u_n\}, \] do not depend on \(u=(u_1,\dots,u_n)\) if the \(m \times m\) matrices \(A_i(u)\) satisfy the equations \[ \begin{aligned} \frac{\partial}{\partial u_j} A_i&= \frac{[A_i,A_j]}{u_i-u_j}, \quad i\neq j, \\ \frac{\partial}{\partial u_i} A_i&= - \sum_{i \neq j}\frac{[A_i,A_j]}{u_i-u_j}. \end{aligned} \] After a short review of the results characterizing the close connection of Schlesinger equations with Painlevé's and Garnier's equations, the authors note that the problem of construction and classification of solutions to the Painlevé equations remains open (for \(P_{\text{IV}}\)) although there are many results based on the theory of symmetries of the Painlevé equations. The last results give a geometric approach to study monodromy data of Fuchsian equations. The object of the paper under review is the investigation of the symmetries of Schlesinger equations, i.e., of birational transformations acting in the space of Fuchsian systems that map solutions to solutions. One class of such symmetries, so called gauge transformations, is well known. Using as example the works [\textit{B. Malgrange}, Mathématique et physique, Sémin. Éc. Norm. Supér., Paris 1979--1982, Prog. Math. 37, 401--426 (1983; Zbl 0528.32017), \textit{Yu. I. Manin}, Sixth Painlevé equation, universal elliptic curve, and mirror of \(\mathbb{P}^2\). In: Khovanskij, A. (ed.) et al., Geometry of differential equations. Dedicated to V. I. Arnold on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. Transl., Ser. 2, Am. Math. Soc. 186(39), 131--151 (1998; Zbl 0948.14025), \textit{D. Arinkin} and \textit{s. Lysenko}, Int. Math. Res. Not. 1997, No. 19, 983--999 (1997l Zbl 0918.14015), \textit{K. Okamoto} and \textit{H.Kimura}, Q. J. Math., Oxf. (2) 37, 61--80 (1986; Zbl 0597.35114), \textit{T. Tsuda}, Universal characters and integrable systems, PhD thesis, Tokyo Graduate School of Mathematics (2003)] where the authors used the Hamiltonian formulation of the corresponding equations and counting that some of their symmetries were generalized to the Schlesinger equations \(S_{(n,2)}\), the authors of the reviewed paper present a canonical Hamiltonian formulation of the Schlesinger equation \(S_{(n,m)}\) for all \(n, m\). The first result is the Hamiltonian system in canonical form: \[ \frac{\partial q_i}{\partial u_k}=\frac{\partial {\mathcal H}_k} {\partial p_i},\qquad \frac{\partial p_i}{\partial u_k}=-\frac{\partial {\mathcal H}_k} {\partial q_i}, \] where \(q_1,\ldots,q_g\) are connected with apparent singularities arising when the Fuchsian system is transformed into the ordinary Fuchsian differential equation \[ y^{(m)}=\sum_{i=1} ^{m-1} d_l(z)y^{(i)}, \] and the corresponding \(p_i\) coordinates (conjugated momenta) are \[ p_i=\text{Res}_{z=q_i}(d_{m-2}(z)+1/2 d_{m-1}(z)^2), \quad i=1,\ldots,g. \] The corresponding Hamiltonian is \[ \mathcal H=\mathcal H_k(q,p,u)=-\text{Res}_{z=u_k}(d_{m-2}(z)+1/2 d_{m-1}(z)^2), \quad k=1,\ldots,n. \] Rational Darboux coordinated means that the elementary symmetric functions \(\sigma_1(q),\ldots,\sigma_g(q)\) and \(\sigma_1(p),\dots,\sigma_g(p)\) are rational functions of the coefficients of the system and the poles \(u_1,\ldots,u_n\). Moreover, there exist rational functions \(A_i=A_i(q,p)\), \(i=1,\ldots,n\), symmetric in \((q_1,p_1),\ldots,(q_g,p_g)\) with coefficients depending on \(u_1,\ldots,u_n\) and on the eigenvalues of the matrices \(A_i,\quad i=1,\ldots,n,\infty.\) All other Fuchsian systems with the same poles \(u_1,\ldots,u_n\) are obtained by simultaneous diagonal conjugation. The authors note that the situation is more complex in the nongeneric case. The other result of the paper is the comparison of the isomonodromic Darboux coordinates with those obtained in the framework of the theory of algebro-geometrically integrable systems, so called spectral Darboux coordinates. The structure of the paper is the following. In Section 2, the known relationship between the Schlesinger equations and isomonodromic deformations of Fuchsian systems are presented. In Section 3, the Hamiltonian formulation of Schlesinger equations is given. Besides, the formula for symplectic structure of Schlesinger equations is considered. This formula recently found by I. Krichever is useful for calculations with isomonodromic coordinates. In Section 4, the construction of the isomonodromic Darboux coordinates is given and a birational isomorphism between the space of Fuchsian systems considered modulo conjugations and the space of special Fuchsian differential equations is established. Section 5 is devoted to the semiclassical asymptotics of the isomonodromic Darboux coordinates via spectral Darboux coordinates (necessary material concerning Darboux coordinates is given in the appendix). In conclusion the results are applied to constructing nontrivial symmetries of Schlesinger equations.