Involutive directions and new involutive divisions (Q5948764)

This is a technical paper which will be of value to experts on Gröbner bases and their generalizations. Given a system of partial differential equations, a classical question is the determination of a minimal set of integrability conditions. The names of Janet, Thomas, Riquier and Ritt are associated with the ring theoretic approach [\textit{J. Janet}, J. Math. Pure Appl. (8) 3, 65-151 (1920; JFM 47.0440.03); \textit{C. Riquier}, Les systèmes d'équations aux dérivées partielles, Gauthier-Villars, Paris (1909; JFM 40.0411.01); \textit{J. F. Ritt}, Differential algebra, AMS, New York (1950; Zbl 0037.18402)]. Part of the philosophy is to divide the set of independent variables into two subsets, one of which is sufficient for completion of the ideal of relations. The authors present a language (the notion of involutive direction) which unifies the divisions associated with Janet, Thomas and Pommaret as well as the more recent ones of [\textit{V. P. Gerdt} and \textit{Yu. A. Blinkov}, Math. Comput. Simul. 45, 543-560 (1998; Zbl 1017.13501)]. Their properties are developed and related to conditions of finite generation type (Noether, Artin) and finally a completion algorithm is offered which is claimed to be an improvement on that of [\textit{V. P. Gerdt} and \textit{Yu. A. Blinkov}, Math. Comput. Simul. 45, 519-541 (1998; Zbl 1017.13500)].