Integrable Discrete Geometry: the Quadrilateral Lattice, its Transformations and Reductions

We review recent results on Integrable Discrete Geometry. It turns out that most of the known (continuous and/or discrete) integrable systems are particular symmetries of the quadrilateral lattice, a multidimensional lattice characterized by the planarity of its elementary quadrilaterals. Therefore the linear property of planarity seems to be a basic geometric property underlying integrability. We solve the initial value problem for the quadrilateral lattice and we present the geometric meaning of its τ– function, as the potential connecting its forward and backward data. We present the theory of transformations of the quadrilateral lattice, which is based on the discrete analogue of the theory of rectilinear congruences. In particular, we discuss the discrete analogues of the Laplace, Combescure, Lévy, radial and fundamental transformations and their interrelations. We also show how the sequence of Laplace transformations of a quadrilateral surface is described by the discrete Toda system in three dimensions. We finally show that these classical transformations are strictly related to the basic operators associated with the quantum field theoretical formulation of the multicomponent Kadomtsev–Petviashvilii hierarchy. We review the properties of quadrilateral hyperplane lattices, which play an interesting role in the reduction theory, when the introduction of additional geometric structures allows to establish a connection between point and hyperplane lattices. We present and fully characterize some geometrically distinguished reductions of the quadrilateral lattice, like the symmetric, circular and Egorov lattices; we review also basic geometric results of the theory of quadrilateral lattices in quadrics, and the corresponding analogue of the Ribaucour reduction of the fundamental transformation. We finally remark that the equations characterizing the above lattices are relevant in physics, being integrable discretizations of equations arising in hydrodynamics and in quantum field theory.