Bäcklund transform

In mathematics, Bäcklund transforms or Bäcklund transformations (named after the Swedish mathematician Albert Victor Bäcklund) relate partial differential equations and their solutions. They are an important tool in soliton theory and integrable systems. A Bäcklund transform is typically a system of first order partial differential equations relating two functions, and often depending on an additional parameter. It implies that the two functions separately satisfy partial differential equations, and each of the two functions is then said to be a Bäcklund transformation of the other.

A Bäcklund transform which relates solutions of the same equation is called an invariant Bäcklund transform or auto-Bäcklund transform. If such a transform can be found, much can be deduced about the solutions of the equation especially if the Bäcklund transform contains a parameter. However, no systematic way of finding Bäcklund transforms is known.

Bäcklund transforms have their origins in differential geometry: the first nontrivial example is the transformation of pseudospherical surfaces introduced by L. Bianchi and A.V. Bäcklund in the 1880s. This is a geometrical construction of a new pseudospherical surface from an initial such surface using a solution of a linear differential equation. Pseudospherical surfaces can be described as solutions of the sine-Gordon equation, and hence the Bäcklund transformation of surfaces can be viewed as a transformation of solutions of the sine-Gordon equation.

The prototypical example of a Bäcklund transform is the Cauchy–Riemann system

which relates the real and imaginary parts u and v of a holomorphic function. This first order system of partial differential equations has the following properties.

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