Twistor correspondences for the soliton hierarchies

In this article we propose a new overview on the theory of integrable systems based on symmetry reduction of the anti-self-dual Yang—Mills equations and its twistor correspondence. First, the non-linear Schrödinger (NS) equations and the Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equations are shown to be symmetry reductions of the anti-self-dual Yang—Mills (ASDYM) equation with real forms of SL (2, ) as gauge groups.

We obtain a twistor correspondence between solutions of the NS and KdV equations and certain holomorphic vector bundles with a symmetry on the total space of the complex line bundle of Chern class two on the Riemann sphere. Remarkably, when the Chern class is increased, the correspondence extends to the NS and KdV hierarchies. If the symmetry condition is dropped we obtain a twistor correspondence for a hierarchy for the Bogomolny equations, which yields the KdV and NS hierarchies when the symmetry is imposed.

The inverse scattering transform is shown to be a coordinate realization of the twistor correspondence. Both the pure solitons and the solitonless cases are treated. The k-soliton solutions arise from the kth “Ward ansatze” in an analogous fashion to the monopole solutions.