No Arabic abstract
In this series of lectures, we (re)view the geometric method that reconstructs, from a geometric object: the spectral curve, an integrable system, and in particular its Tau function, Baker-Akhiezer functions and current amplitudes, all having an interpretation as CFT conformal blocks. The construction identifies Hamiltonians with cycles on the curve, and times with periods (integrals of forms over cycles). All the integrable structure is formulated in terms of homology of contours, the phase space is a space of cycles where the symplectic form is the intersection, the Hirota operator is a degree 2 second-kind cycle, a Sato shift is an addition of a 3rd kind cycle, the Hirota equations amount to saying that merging 3rd kind cycles (monopoles) yields a 2nd kind cycle (dipole). The lecture is divided into 3 parts: 1) classical case, perturbative: the spectral curve is a ramified cover of a base Riemann surface -- with some additional structure -- and the integrable system is defined as a formal power series of a small dispersion parameter $epsilon$. 2) dispersive classical case, non perturbative: the spectral curve is defined not as a ramified cover (which would be a bundle with discrete fiber), but as a vector bundle -- whose dispersionless limit consists in chosing a finite set of vectors in each fiber. 3) non-commutative case, and perturbative. The spectral curve is here a non-commutative surface, whose geometry will be defined in lecture III. 4) the full non-commutative dispersionless theory is under development is not presented in these lectures.
We present a physical interpretation of the doubling of the algebra, which is the basic ingredient of the noncommutative spectral geometry, developed by Connes and collaborators as an approach to unification. We discuss its connection to dissipation and to the gauge structure of the theory. We then argue, following t Hoofts conjecture, that noncommutative spectral geometry classical construction carries implicit in its feature of the doubling of the algebra the seeds of quantization.
We derive Fredholm determinant representation for isomonodromic tau functions of Fuchsian systems with $n$ regular singular points on the Riemann sphere and generic monodromy in $mathrm{GL}(N,mathbb C)$. The corresponding operator acts in the direct sum of $N(n-3)$ copies of $L^2(S^1)$. Its kernel has a block integrable form and is expressed in terms of fundamental solutions of $n-2$ elementary 3-point Fuchsian systems whose monodromy is determined by monodromy of the relevant $n$-point system via a decomposition of the punctured sphere into pairs of pants. For $N=2$ these building blocks have hypergeometric representations, the kernel becomes completely explicit and has Cauchy type. In this case Fredholm determinant expansion yields multivariate series representation for the tau function of the Garnier system, obtained earlier via its identification with Fourier transform of Liouville conformal block (or a dual Nekrasov-Okounkov partition function). Further specialization to $n=4$ gives a series representation of the general solution to Painleve VI equation.
In this paper we outline the construction of semiclassical eigenfunctions of integrable models in terms of the semiclassical path integral for the Poisson sigma model with the target space being the phase space of the integrable system. The semiclassical path integral is defined as a formal power series with coefficients being Feynman diagrams. We also argue that in a similar way one can obtain irreducible semiclassical representations of Kontsevichs star product.
We define a tau function for a generic Riemann-Hilbert problem posed on a union of non-intersecting smooth closed curves with jump matrices analytic in their neighborhood. The tau function depends on parameters of the jumps and is expressed as the Fredholm determinant of an integral operator with block integrable kernel constructed in terms of elementary parametrices. Its logarithmic derivatives with respect to parameters are given by contour integrals involving these parametrices and the solution of the Riemann-Hilbert problem. In the case of one circle, the tau function coincides with Widoms determinant arising in the asymptotics of block Toeplitz matrices. Our construction gives the Jimbo-Miwa-Ueno tau function for Riemann-Hilbert problems of isomonodromic origin (Painleve VI, V, III, Garnier system, etc) and the Sato-Segal-Wilson tau function for integrable hierarchies such as Gelfand-Dickey and Drinfeld-Sokolov.
The asymptotic expansion of the heat-kernel for small values of its argument has been studied in many different cases and has been applied to 1-loop calculations in Quantum Field Theory. In this thesis we consider this asymptotic behavior for certain singular differential operators which can be related to quantum fields on manifolds with conical singularities. Our main result is that, due to the existence of this singularity and of infinitely many boundary conditions of physical relevance related to the admissible behavior of the fields on the singular point, the heat-kernel has an unusual asymptotic expansion. We describe examples where the heat-kernel admits an asymptotic expansion in powers of its argument whose exponents depend on external parameters. As far as we know, this kind of asymptotics had not been found and therefore its physical consequences are still unexplored.