Think globally, compute locally

We introduce a new formulation of the so-called topological recursion, that is defined globally on a compact Riemann surface. We prove that it is equivalent to the generalized recursion for spectral curves with arbitrary ramification. Using this global formulation, we also prove that the correlation functions constructed from the recursion for curves with arbitrary ramification can be obtained as suitable limits of correlation functions for curves with only simple ramification. It then follows that they both satisfy the properties that were originally proved only for curves with simple ramification.Comment: 37 pages, v2: published versio

Kac-Moody Groups and Integrability of Soliton Equations

A new approach to integrability of affine Toda field theories and closely related to them KdV hierarchies is proposed. The flows of a hierarchy are explicitly identified with infinitesimal action of the principal abelian subalgebra of the nilpotent part of the corresponding affine algebra on a homogeneous space. This is an extended version of the paper "Generalized KdV flows and nilpotent subgroups of affine Kac-Moody groups"; it has been accepted for publication in Inventiones Mathematicae.Comment: 30 pages, AMSLatex; extended version accepted for publication in Invent. Mat