Construction of solutions of the sine-Gordon equation by means of Fredholm determinants (Q5903034)

The author makes the following introductory statement: ''The famous ''soliton equations'' or ''nonlinear evolution equations solvable by the inverse spectral transform'' are a class of nonlinear differential (or difference) equations which share the following three outstanding properties: There exists a transformation to a form which is essentially homogeneous quadratic in the unknown and its derivatives (''Hirota's bilinear form'') and therefore allows a power series expansion. For some solutions, the power series terminates at a finite number and hence gives rise to explicit solutions known as ''N-soliton solutions''. There exists a transformation derived from a scattering problem which transforms the nonlinear PDE into a linear ODE (''inverse scattering transform'' or ''(inverse) spectral transform'') but only involves the solution of linear equations. There exists a transformation connecting two solutions of the same equation via a pair of ODE's (one in x, one in t) (Bäcklund transformation); in particular, it is possible to construct a new solution from every known one by solving a pair of ODE's. These properties have been found independently, and various attempts have been made to detect something like a common underlying principle, e.g. the Riccati form of the inverse scattering transform the method of generalized Wronskian relations and very recently, the work of Oishi Rosales, Ablowitz, Ramani and Segur, Olver and McLeod, and Wadati and Sawada. In this article we propose such a new ''principle'' and show how it works for the sine-Gordon equation. In the author's opinion, this principle provides a very straightforward and natural explanation of the three properties mentioned above and, in addition, yields some new results. It may be expected that these results can be carried over to other soliton equations, as (modified) Korteweg-de Vries nonlinear Schrödinger Toda lattice and others.'' The author proposes such a principle. To every soliton equation it is possible to assign a linear PDE called the ''base equation'' such that the map \(f\to u\) (mapping a solution of the base equation into a solution of the soliton equation) can be constructed by computing the Fredholm determinants for the set of linear integral operators.