Laplace Type Invariants for Parabolic Equations

The Laplace invariants pertain to linear hyperbolic differentialequations with two independent variables. They were discovered byLaplace in 1773 and used in his integration theory of hyperbolicequations. Cotton extended the Laplace invariants to ellipticequations in 1900. Cotton's invariants can be obtained from the Laplaceinvariants merely by the complex change of variables relating theelliptic and hyperbolic equations.To the best of my knowledge, the invariants for parabolic equations werenot found thus far. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap byconsidering what will be called Laplace type invariants (or seminvariants), i.e. the quantities that remain unaltered under the linear transformation of the dependent variable. Laplace type invariants are calculated here for all hyperbolic, elliptic and parabolic equations using the unified infinitesimal method. A new invariant is found forparabolic equations.