The profinite dimensional manifold structure of formal solution spaces of formally integrable PDEs (Q505962)

The article consists of two main parts. In the first part, the authors develop their version of the theory of profinite dimensional manifolds. Such a manifold is defined here as a ringed space together with what the authors call a pfd structure consisting of a whole equivalence class of representations by projective systems of finite dimensional manifolds. All the systems within the class induce the same structure sheaf so that all differential geometric constructions do not depend on a particular representative. In the second part, the authors review the needed concepts from the formal theory of partial differential equations following Spencer and Goldschmidt. It is then shown that the jet bundle of infinite order is a profinite dimensional manifold and that the formal solution space of a formally integrable equation is a profinite dimensional submanifold. As an application, the Euler-Lagrange equation of a relativistic scalar field with a polynomial self-interaction is considered.