Integral preserving discretization of 2D Toda lattices

Abstract

Abstract There are different methods of discretizing integrable systems. We consider semi-discrete analog of two-dimensional Toda lattices associated to the Cartan matrices of simple Lie algebras that was proposed by Habibullin in 2011. This discretization is based on the notion of Darboux integrability. Generalized Toda lattices are known to be Darboux integrable in the continuous case (that is, they admit complete families of characteristic integrals in both directions). We prove that semi-discrete analogs of Toda lattices associated to the Cartan matrices of all simple Lie algebras are Darboux integrable. By examining the properties of Habibullin’s discretization we show that if a function is a characteristic integral for a generalized Toda lattice in the continuous case, then the same function is a characteristic integral in the semi-discrete case as well. We consider characteristic algebras of such integral-preserving discretizations of Toda lattices to prove the existence of complete families of characteristic integrals in the second direction.