Coupled systems of nonlinear wave equations and finite-dimensional Lie algebras. I (Q578693)

The author studies coupled systems of nonlinear wave equations from the point of view of their formal Darboux integrability. In Section 2 a brief exposition of Vessiot's 1924 vector field formulation of differential systems is reduced and its application to the classical problem of one- dimensional compressible fluid flow illustrated. In Section 3 the general coupled system \[ (1)\quad F_ j\{x,y,z_ 1,z_ 2,\partial z_ 1/\partial x,\partial z_ 1/\partial y,\partial z_ 2/\partial x,\partial z_ 2/\partial y,\partial^ 2z_ 1/\partial x\partial y, \] \[ \partial^ 2z_ 1/\partial y^ 2,\partial^ 2z_ 2/\partial x^ 2,\partial^ 2z_ 2/\partial x\partial y,\partial^ 2z_ 2/\partial y^ 2\}=0,\quad j=1,2 \] is investigated. The module of vector fields on the second-order jet bundle - the Vessiot distribution is associated to equation (1). By imposing certain conditions on the structure of the Vessiot distributions the author identifies the so-called separable Vessiot distributions. By expressing the separable Vessiot distributions in a basis of singular vector fields the author shows that there are at most 27 equivalence classes of such distributions. Of these classes, 14 are formally Darboux integrable. In Section 4 for one of these Darboux integrable classes the author shows that it is in correspondence with the class of six-dimensional simply transitive Lie algebras. In Section 5 this latter result is used to reduce the problem of constructing exact general solutions of the nonlinear wave equations under study to the integration of Lie systems.