Negative flows of generalized KdV and mKdV hierarchies and their gauge-Miura transformations

A bstract The KdV hierarchy is a paradigmatic example of the rich mathematical structure underlying integrable systems and has far-reaching connections in several areas of theoretical physics. While the positive part of the KdV hierarchy is well known, in this paper we consider an affine Lie algebraic construction for its negative part. We show that the original Miura transformation can be extended to a gauge transformation that implies several new types of relations among the negative flows of the KdV and mKdV hierarchies. Contrary to the positive flows, such a "gauge-Miura" correspondence becomes degenerate whereby more than one negative mKdV model is mapped into a single negative KdV model. For instance, the sine-Gordon and another negative mKdV flow are mapped into a single negative KdV flow which inherits solutions of both former models. The gauge-Miura correspondence implies a rich degeneracy regarding solutions of these hierarchies. We obtain similar results for the generalized KdV and mKdV hierachies constructed with the affine Lie algebra $$ \hat{s\ell}\left(r+1\right) $$ s ℓ ̂ r + 1 . In this case the first negative mKdV flow corresponds to an affine Toda field theory and the gauge-Miura correspondence yields its KdV counterpart. In particular, we show explicitly a KdV analog of the Tzitzéica-Bullough-Dodd model. In short, we uncover a rich mathematical structure for the negative flows of integrable hierarchies obtaining novel relations and integrable systems.