Geometric k-normality of curves and applications

The notion of geometric k-normality for curves is introduced in complete generality and is investigated in the case of nodal and cuspidal curves living on several types of surfaces. We discuss and suggest some applications of this notion to the study of Severi varieties of nodal curves on surfaces of general type and on the plane.Comment: 15 page

Purely non-local Hamiltonian formalism, Kohno connections and ∨\vee-systems

In this paper, we extend purely non-local Hamiltonian formalism to a class of Riemannian F-manifolds, without assumptions on the semisimplicity of the product $\circ$ or on the flatness of the connection $\nabla$. In the flat case we show that the recurrence relations for the principal hierarchy can be re-interpreted using a local and purely non-local Hamiltonian operators and in this case they split into two Lenard-Magri chains, one involving the even terms, the other involving the odd terms. Furthermore, we give an elementary proof that the Kohno property and the $\vee$-system condition are equivalent under suitable conditions and we show how to associate a purely non-local Hamiltonian structure to any $\vee$-system, including degenerate ones.Comment: 22 page

Stacks of cyclic covers of projective spaces

We define stacks of uniform cyclic covers of Brauer-Severi schemes, proving that they can be realized as quotient stacks of open subsets of representations, and compute the Picard group for the open substacks parametrizing smooth uniform cyclic covers. Moreover, we give an analogous description for stacks parametrizing triple cyclic covers of Brauer-Severi schemes of rank 1, which are not necessarily uniform, and give a presentation of the Picard group for substacks corresponding to smooth triple cyclic covers.Comment: 23 pages; some minor changes; to appear in Compositio Mathematic

Integrable viscous conservation laws

We propose an extension of the Dubrovin-Zhang perturbative approach to the study of normal forms for non-Hamiltonian integrable scalar conservation laws. The explicit computation of the first few corrections leads to the conjecture that such normal forms are parameterized by one single functional parameter, named viscous central invariant. A constant valued viscous central invariant corresponds to the well-known Burgers hierarchy. The case of a linear viscous central invariant provides a viscous analog of the Camassa-Holm equation, that formerly appeared as a reduction of a two-component Hamiltonian integrable systems. We write explicitly the negative and positive hierarchy associated with this equation and prove the integrability showing that they can be mapped respectively into the heat hierarchy and its negative counterpart, named the Klein-Gordon hierarchy. A local well-posedness theorem for periodic initial data is also proven. We show how transport equations can be used to effectively construct asymptotic solutions via an extension of the quasi-Miura map that preserves the initial datum. The method is alternative to the method of the string equation for Hamiltonian conservation laws and naturally extends to the viscous case. Using these tools we derive the viscous analog of the Painlevé I2 equation that describes the universal behaviour of the solution at the critical point of gradient catastrophe

Darboux-Egorov system, bi-flat FF-manifolds and Painlev\'e VI

This is a generalization of the procedure presented in [3] to construct semisimple bi-flat $F$-manifolds $(M,\nabla^{(1)},\nabla^{(2)},\circ,*,e,E)$ starting from homogeneous solutions of degree -1 of Darboux-Egorov-system. The Lam\'e coefficients $H_i$ involved in the construction are still homogeneous functions of a certain degree $d_i$ but we consider the general case $d_i\ne d_j$. As a consequence the rotation coefficients $\beta_{ij}$ are homogeneous functions of degree $d_i-d_j-1$. It turns out that any semisimple bi-flat $F$ manifold satisfying a natural additional assumption can be obtained in this way. Finally we show that three dimensional semisimple bi-flat $F$-manifolds are parametrized by solutions of the full family of Painlev\'e VI.Comment: 20 page

Complex reflection groups, logarithmic connections and bi-flat F-manifolds

We show that bi-flat $F$-manifolds can be interpreted as natural geometrical structures encoding the almost duality for Frobenius manifolds without metric. Using this framework, we extend Dubrovin's duality between orbit spaces of Coxeter groups and Veselov's $\vee$-systems, to the orbit spaces of exceptional well-generated complex reflection groups of rank $2$ and $3$. On the Veselov's $\vee$-systems side, we provide a generalization of the notion of $\vee$-systems that gives rise to a dual connection which coincides with a Dunkl-Kohno-type connection associated with such groups. In particular, this allows us to treat on the same ground several different examples including Coxeter and Shephard groups. Remarkably, as a byproduct of our results, we prove that in some examples basic flat invariants are not uniquely defined. As far as we know, such a phenomenon has never been pointed out before.Comment: 73 page