On universality of critical behaviour in Hamiltonian PDEs

Our main goal is the comparative study of singularities of solutions to the systems of first order quasilinear PDEs and their perturbations containing higher derivatives. The study is focused on the subclass of Hamiltonian PDEs with one spatial dimension. For the systems of order one or two we describe the local structure of singularities of a generic solution to the unperturbed system near the point of "gradient catastrophe" in terms of standard objects of the classical singularity theory; we argue that their perturbed companions must be given by certain special solutions of Painleve' equations and their generalizations.Comment: 59 pages, 2 figures. Amer. Math. Soc. Transl., to appea

On almost duality for Frobenius manifolds

We present a universal construction of almost duality for Frobenius manifolds. The analytic setup of this construction is described in details for the case of semisimple Frobenius manifolds. We illustrate the general considerations by examples from the singularity theory, mirror symmetry, the theory of Coxeter groups and Shephard groups, from the Seiberg - Witten duality.Comment: 62 pages, a reference adde

Flat pencils of metrics and Frobenius manifolds

This paper is based on the author's talk at 1997 Taniguchi Symposium ``Integrable Systems and Algebraic Geometry''. We consider an approach to the theory of Frobenius manifolds based on the geometry of flat pencils of contravariant metrics. It is shown that, under certain homogeneity assumptions, these two objects are identical. The flat pencils of contravariant metrics on a manifold $M$ appear naturally in the classification of bihamiltonian structures of hydrodynamics type on the loop space $L(M)$. This elucidates the relations between Frobenius manifolds and integrable hierarchies.Comment: 25 pages, no figures, plain Te

Geometry and analytic theory of Frobenius manifolds

Main mathematical applications of Frobenius manifolds are in the theory of Gromov - Witten invariants, in singularity theory, in differential geometry of the orbit spaces of reflection groups and of their extensions, in the hamiltonian theory of integrable hierarchies. The theory of Frobenius manifolds establishes remarkable relationships between these, sometimes rather distant, mathematical theories.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Proceedings ICM9

Frobenius Manifolds And Virasoro Constraints

For an arbitrary Frobenius manifold a system of Virasoro constraints is constructed. In the semisimple case these constraints are proved to hold true in the genus one approximation. Particularly, the genus $\leq 1$ Virasoro conjecture of T.Eguchi, K.Hori, M.Jinzenji, and C.-S.Xiong and of S.Katz is proved for smooth projective varieties having semisimple quantum cohomology.Comment: Latex, 40 page

Canonical structure and symmetries of the Schlesinger equations

The Schlesinger equations $S_{(n,m)}$ describe monodromy preserving deformations of order $m$ Fuchsian systems with $n+1$ poles. They can be considered as a family of commuting time-dependent Hamiltonian systems on the direct product of $n$ copies of $m\times m$ matrix algebras equipped with the standard linear Poisson bracket. In this paper we present a new canonical Hamiltonian formulation of the general Schlesinger equations $S_{(n,m)}$ for all $n$, $m$ and we compute the action of the symmetries of the Schlesinger equations in these coordinates.Comment: 92 pages, no figures. Theorem 1.2 corrected, other misprints removed. To appear on Comm. Math. Phy

Extended affine Weyl groups and Frobenius manifolds

We define certain extensions of affine Weyl groups (distinct from these considered by K. Saito [S1] in the theory of extended affine root systems), prove an analogue of Chevalley theorem for their invariants, and construct a Frobenius structure on their orbit spaces. This produces solutions $F(t_1, ..., t_n)$ of WDVV equations of associativity polynomial in $t_1, ..., t_{n-1}, \exp t_n$.Comment: 69 pages, amslatex, some references added, position of Table 1 is corrected. Revised version for Compositio Mathematic

Bihamiltonian Hierarchies in 2D Topological Field Theory At One-Loop Approximation

We compute the genus one correction to the integrable hierarchy describing coupling to gravity of a 2D topological field theory. The bihamiltonian structure of the hierarchy is given by a classical W-algebra; we compute the central charge of this algebra. We also express the generating function of elliptic Gromov - Witten invariants via tau-function of the isomonodromy deformation problem arising in the theory of WDVV equations of associativity.Comment: 53 pages, Latex, two references added, some typos corrected, version to appear in Commun. Math. Phy