Conservation laws for the Korteweg-de Vries equation and the theory of partitions

Abstract

We show how the terms appearing in the expressions for the densities and the fluxes for the Korteweg-de Vries equation may be found by combinatorial methods. Our basic device consists in associating partitions and their Ferrers graphs to the first density and to the first flux, and then in proceeding inductively following very simple rules. Furthermore, we use unrestricted partitions and a recurrence relation to specify every term of every integral power of the Sturm-Liouville (or one-dimensional Schrödinger) operator.