Loewner equations, Hirota equations and reductions of universal Whitham hierarchy

This paper reconsiders finite variable reductions of the universal Whitham hierarchy of genus zero in the perspective of dispersionless Hirota equations. In the case of one-variable reduction, dispersionless Hirota equations turn out to be a powerful tool for understanding the mechanism of reduction. All relevant equations describing the reduction (L\"owner-type equations and diagonal hydrodynamic equations) can be thereby derived and justified in a unified manner. The case of multi-variable reductions is not so straightforward. Nevertheless, the reduction procedure can be formulated in a general form, and justified with the aid of dispersionless Hirota equations. As an application, previous results of Guil, Ma\~{n}as and Mart\'{\i}nez Alonso are reconfirmed in this formulation.Comment: latex 2e using packages amsmath,amssymb,amsthm, 39 pages, no figure; (v2) a few typos corrected and accepted for publicatio