Degenerate first-order Hamiltonian operators of hydrodynamic type in 2D

Abstract

First-order Hamiltonian operators of hydrodynamic type were introduced by Drubrovin and Novikov in 1983. In 2D, they are generated by a pair of contravariant metrics $g$, $\tilde{g}$ and a pair of differential-geometric objects $b$, $\tilde{b}$. If the determinant of the pencil $g+λ\tilde{g}$ vanishes for all $λ$, the operator is called degenerate. In this paper we provide a complete classification of degenerate two- and three-component Hamiltonian operators. Moreover, we study the integrability, by the method of hydrodynamic reductions, of 2+1 Hamiltonian systems arising from the structures we classified.

21 pages. Section 3.1 revised. Some references corrected