Geometry of Lie integrability by quadratures

Abstract

In this paper we extend the Lie theory of integration in two different ways. First we consider a finite dimensional Lie algebra of vector fields and discuss the most general conditions under which the integral curves of one of the fields can be obtained by quadratures in a prescribed way. It turns out that the conditions can be expressed in a purely algebraic way. In a second step we generalize the construction to the case in which we substitute the Lie algebra of vector fields by a module (generalized distribution). We obtain much larger class of integrable systems replacing standard concepts of solvable (or nilpotent) Lie algebra with distributional solvability (nilpotency).

18 pages