Virasoro constraints in Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies (Q907065)

Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies are generalizations of the so-called Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) hierarchy (that is, a family of nonlinear PDEs) to an arbitrary semi-simple Lie group. In this paper, the author describes a geometric theory of Virasoro constraints in generalized Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies. Solutions of Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies are succinctly described by giving a principal bundle on a complex curve together with the data of a Higgs field near infinity. String solutions for these hierarchies are defined as points having a big stabilizer under a certain Lie algebra action. The author characterizes principal bundles coming from string solutions as those possessing connections compatible with the Higgs field near infinity. He shows that tau-functions of string solutions satisfy second-order differential equations generalizing the Virasoro constraints of 2d quantum gravity and concludes the paper with a description of string solutions in terms of opers.