The Abel Symposium 2008 focused on the modern theory of differential equations and their applications in geometry, mechanics, and mathematical physics. Following the tradition of Monge, Abel and Lie, the scientific program emphasized the role of algebro-geometric methods, which nowadays permeate all mathematical models in natural and engineering sciences. The ideas of invariance and symmetry are of fundamental importance in the geometric approach to differential equations, with a serious impact coming from the area of integrable systems and field theories. This volume consists of original contributions and broad overview lectures of the participants of the Symposium. The papers in this volume present the modern approach to this classical subject.

This book on integrable systems and symmetries presents new results on applications of symmetries and integrability techniques to the case of equations defined on the lattice. This relatively new field has many applications, for example, in describing the evolution of crystals and molecular systems defined on lattices, and in finding numerical approximations for differential equations preserving their symmetries. The book contains three chapters and five appendices. The first chapter is an introduction to the general ideas about symmetries, lattices, differential difference and partial difference equations and Lie point symmetries defined on them. Chapter 2 deals with integrable and linearizable systems in two dimensions. The authors start from the prototype of integrable and linearizable partial differential equations, the Korteweg de Vries and the Burgers equations. Then they consider the best known integrable differential difference and partial difference equations. Chapter 3 considers generalized symmetries and conserved densities as integrability criteria. The appendices provide details which may help the readers' understanding of the subjects presented in Chapters 2 and 3. This book is written for PhD students and early researchers, both in theoretical physics and in applied mathematics, who are interested in the study of symmetries and integrability of difference equations.

This book is based on the extensive experience of teaching for mathematics, physics and engineering students in Russia, USA, South Africa and Sweden. The author provides students and teachers with an easy to follow textbook spanning a variety of topics. The methods of local Lie groups discussed in the book provide universal and effective method for solving nonlinear differential equations analytically. Introduction to approximate transformation groups also contained in the book helps to develop skills in constructing approximate solutions for differential equations with a small parameter.

This is the first book devoted to the task of computing integrability structures by computer. The symbolic computation of integrability operator is a computationally hard problem and the book covers a huge number of situations through tutorials. The mathematical part of the book is a new approach to integrability structures that allows to treat all of them in a unified way. The software is an official package of Reduce. Reduce is free software, so everybody can download it and make experiments using the programs available at our website.

In the many physical phenomena ruled by partial differential equations, two extreme fields are currently overcrowded due to recent considerable developments: 1) the field of completely integrable equations, whose recent advances are the inverse spectral transform, the recursion operator, underlying Hamiltonian structures, Lax pairs, etc 2) the field of dynamical systems, often built as models of observed physical phenomena: turbulence, intermittency, Poincare sections, transition to chaos, etc. In between there is a very large region where systems are neither integrable nor nonintegrable, but partially integrable, and people working in the latter domain often know methods from either 1) or 2). Due to the growing interest in partially integrable systems, we decided to organize a meeting for physicists active or about to undertake research in this field, and we thought that an appropriate form would be a school. Indeed, some of the above mentioned methods are often adaptable outside their original domain and therefore worth to be taught in an interdisciplinary school. One of the main concerns was to keep a correct balance between physics and mathematics, and this is reflected in the list of courses.

A concise and accessible introduction to the wide range of topics in geometric approaches to differential equations.

Poisson structures appear in a large variety of contexts, ranging from string theory, classical/quantum mechanics and differential geometry to abstract algebra, algebraic geometry and representation theory. In each one of these contexts, it turns out that the Poisson structure is not a theoretical artifact, but a key element which, unsolicited, comes along with the problem that is investigated, and its delicate properties are decisive for the solution to the problem in nearly all cases. Poisson Structures is the first book that offers a comprehensive introduction to the theory, as well as an overview of the different aspects of Poisson structures. The first part covers solid foundations, the central part consists of a detailed exposition of the different known types of Poisson structures and of the (usually mathematical) contexts in which they appear, and the final part is devoted to the two main applications of Poisson structures (integrable systems and deformation quantization). The clear structure of the book makes it adequate for readers who come across Poisson structures in their research or for graduate students or advanced researchers who are interested in an introduction to the many facets and applications of Poisson structures.​

A collection of articles discussing integrable systems and algebraic geometry from leading researchers in the field.

This three-week summer program considered the symmetries preserving various natural geometric structures. There are two parts to the proceedings. The articles in the first part are expository but all contain significant new material. The articles in the second part are concerned with original research. All articles were thoroughly refereed and the range of interrelated work ensures that this will be an extremely useful collection.

This volume comprises state-of-the-art articles in discrete integrable systems.