Hamiltonian structures for integrable nonabelian difference equations (Q2129296)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the notion of Hamiltonian structure for noncommutative systems, in particular to focus on the differential-difference case, namely when these structures are given by difference operators. More precisely, the main purpose is to study the notion of Hamiltonian structure for nonabelian differential-difference systems, exploring the link between the different algebraic (in terms of double Poisson algebras and vertex algebras) and geometric (in terms of nonabelian Poisson bivectors) definitions. The authors introduce multiplicative double Poisson vertex algebras (PVAs) as the suitable noncommutative counterpart to multiplicative PVAs, used to describe Hamiltonian differential-difference equations in the commutative setting, and prove that these algebras are in one-to-one correspondence with the Poisson structures defined by difference operators, thus providing a sufficient condition to fulfill the Jacobi identity. Moreover, they define nonabelian polyvector fields and their Schouten brackets, for both finitely generated noncommutative algebras and infinitely generated difference ones. This allows them to provide a unified characterization of Poisson bivectors and double quasi-Poisson algebra structures. As an application they obtain some results towards the classification of local scalar Hamiltonian difference structures and the construction of Hamiltonian structures for the integrable nonabelian Kaup, Ablowitz-Ladik and Chen-Lee-Liu lattices. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 is an introduction to the subject. Section 2 deals with Hamiltonian structures and Poisson bivectors. The authors review the language and the notion of Hamiltonian structures widely adopted within the integrable systems community. Here, the focus is the notion of Poisson bracket: an operator is called Hamiltonian if it can be used to define a Poisson bracket; the same operator defines a functional bivector whose prolongation along its flow vanishes. This last condition is equivalent to the Poisson property. Section 3 is devoted to double Poisson algebras and Hamiltonian operators. Here the authors present a more recent viewpoint: a suitable algebraic description of the Hamiltonian structures of nonabelian ordinary differential equations can be given in terms of double Poisson algebras (see [\textit{M. Van den Bergh}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 360, No. 11, 5711--5769 (2008; Zbl 1157.53046)]). While this theory is reasonably well established, the use of a similar formalism to describe partial differential equations is much more recent (see [\textit{A. De Sole} et al., Adv. Math. 281, 1025--1099 (2015; Zbl 1327.17023)]) and encoded in the theory of double Poisson vertex algebras. The main object of these theories is the so-called double (lambda) bracket, defined on associative (differential) algebras, essentially replacing the action of the Hamiltonian operators. In this paper, the authors focus on differential-difference equations, a class of systems where the time is a continuous variable, while the spatial one takes values on a lattice. They follow the lines of multiplicative PVAs studied in [\textit{A. De Sole} et al., Commun. Math. Phys. 370, No. 3, 1019--1068 (2019; Zbl 1421.35323)] to define the analogue algebraic structures for noncommutative difference algebras, and hence to apply it to differential-difference nonabelian systems. They call such a structure double multiplicative Poisson vertex algebra and prove that it is equivalent to the usual notion of Hamiltonian operator. In Section 4 the authors follow the spirit of classical Poisson geometry, which has been successfully adopted in the study of (abelian) Hamiltonian systems, to find a counterpart of these algebraic structures as suitably defined functional bivector fields. This allows them to define the whole Poisson-Lichnerowicz complex and its cohomology, and to provide a new interpretation of the double quasi-Poisson structure. Section 5 deals with quasi-Poisson structures and Hamiltonian structures. The authors present, starting from the Kontsevich system (see [\textit{T. Wolf} and \textit{O. Efimovskaya}, Lett. Math. Phys. 100, No. 2, 161--170 (2012; Zbl 1256.34026)]), the notion of quasi-Poisson algebras, introduced by \textit{M. Van den Bergh} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 360, No. 11, 5711--5769 (2008; Zbl 1157.53046)], from which one can define a Poisson bracket even if the corresponding bivector is not Poisson. They investigate the equations that a bivector must satisfy in order to be called Hamiltonian and find a simple interpretation for this property. Section 6 is devoted to nonabelian Hamiltonian operators for difference systems. The authors provide several examples of scalar ultralocal and local nonabelian Hamiltonian operators. However, many local Hamiltonian operators that produce abelian integrable systems do not have a local counterpart in the nonabelian case, but correspond to nonlocal difference operators. The missing structures of their recent work fall within this category; they describe for the first time the two-component Hamiltonian structure for the nonabelian Kaup, Ablowitz-Ladik and Chen-Lee-Liu lattices. Section 7 is devoted to the discussion of the results obtained in this paper and further work. The paper is supported by two appendices: the first on the equivalence between the Schouten property and the Jacobi identity for double multiplicative PVAs, and the second concerns graded Jacobi identity for the Schouten bracket.