G Calvert et al 1996 Class. Quantum Grav. 13 L33-L39 doi:10.1088/0264-9381/13/4/001 PDF (88.6 KB) | References | Articles citing this article
G Calvert and N M J Woodhouse Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Abstract. Both the Ernst equation and the six Painlevé transcendental equations are reductions of the self-dual Yang - Mills (SDYM) equations. We show how this link can be used to find exact solutions to Einstein's equations and to understand aspects of the integrability of the Ernst equation.
It is shown in this book, that even though the six Painleve equations are nonlinear, it is still possible, using a new technique called the Riemann-Hilbert formalism, to obtain analogous explicit formulas for the Painleve transcendents. This striking fact, apparently unknown to Painleve Transcendents: The Riemann-Hilbert Approach
Athanassios S. Fokas, Alexander R. Its, Andrei A. Kapaev, and Victor Yu. Novokshenov
Price: £63.50 (Hardback) ISBN-10: 0-8218-3651-X ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-3651-4 Publication date: 9 November 2006 American Mathematical Society pages, mm Series: Mathematical Surveys and Monographs number 128;
Painleve and his contemporaries, is the key ingredient for the remarkable applicability of these ``nonlinear special functions''. The book describes in detail the Riemann-Hilbert method and emphasizes its close connection to classical monodromy theory of linear equations as well as to modern theory of integrable systems.
Although these equations were initially obtained answering a strictly mathematical question, they appeared later in an astonishing (and growing) range of applications, including, e.g., statistical physics, fluid mechanics, random matrices, and orthogonal polynomials. Actually, it is now becoming clear that the Painleve transcendents (i.e., the solutions of the Painleve equations) play the same role in nonlinear mathematical physics that the classical special functions, such as Airy and Bessel functions, play in linear physics. The explicit formulas relating the asymptotic behaviour of the classical special functions at different critical points, play a crucial role in the applications of these functions.