English

Second-order PDEs in 4D with half-flat conformal structure

Differential Geometry 2020-02-04 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems

Abstract

We study second-order PDEs in 4D for which the conformal structure defined by the characteristic variety of the equation is half-flat (self-dual or anti-self-dual) on every solution. We prove that this requirement implies the Monge-Ampere property. Since half-flatness of the conformal structure is equivalent to the existence of a nontrivial dispersionless Lax pair, our result explains the observation that all known scalar second-order integrable dispersionless PDEs in dimensions four and higher are of Monge-Ampere type. Some partial classification results of Monge-Ampere equations in 4D with half-flat conformal structure are also obtained.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.00373,
  title  = {Second-order PDEs in 4D with half-flat conformal structure},
  author = {Sobhi Berjawi and Eugene Ferapontov and Boris Kruglikov and Vladimir Novikov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.00373},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:28:06.768Z