Geodesic flows on diffeomorphisms of the circle, Grassmannians, and the geometry of the periodic KdV equation (Q5929518)

This paper is devoted to the study geometric aspects of a certain class of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of the circle modulo conformal diffeomorphisms of the disk. More precisely, this Teichmüller space \({\mathfrak A}\) is endowed with a Hilbert manifold structure by means of a (unique up to constant) right-invariant Kähler metric and contains the Teichmüller space of \(C^\infty\) diffeomorphisms of the circle. Using results from the theory of quasiconformal mappings the authors construct an embedding of \({\mathfrak A}\) into the infinite-dimensional Segal-Wilson Grassmannian. The authors show that if \({\mathfrak A}\) is endowed with the above mentioned right-invariant Kähler metric, then one can associate to each geodesic through the identity a solution to the KdV equation. Furthermore, in this case, the solution to the KdV equation exists for all time.