The Hamilton Cartan formalism for rth-order Lagrangians and the integrability of the KdV and modified KdV equations

Abstract

The Hamilton Cartan formalism for rth order Lagrangians is presented in a form suited to dealing with higher-order conserved currents. Noether's Theorem and its converse are stated and Poisson brackets are defined for conserved charges. An isomorphism between the Lie algebra of conserved currents and a Lie algebra of infinitesimal symmetries of the Cartan form is established. This isomorphism, together with the commutativity of the Backlund transformations for the KdV and modified KdV equations, allows a simple geometric proof that the infinite collections of conserved charges for these equations are in involution with respect to the Poisson bracket determined by their Lagrangians. Thus, the formal complete integrability of these equations appears as a consequence of the properties of their Backlund transformations.