On Bäcklund and Ribaucour transformations for surfaces with constant negative curvature (Q280122)

The authors study the Bäcklund and Ribaucour transformations of surfaces with constant negative Gaussian curvature in Euclidean 3-space. Based on the property that the composition of Bäcklund transformations generates a 4-parameter family of surfaces with the same curvature and the same condition holds for Ribaucour transformations of such surfaces, the authors consider the question of equivalence of these two procedures. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the congruence of the surfaces given by these two procedures are given. In addition, an explicit example is given of a composition of Bäcklund transformations which is not a Ribaucour transformation. The analytic interpretation of this result is applied to describe new exact solutions of the sine-Gordon equation.