Tau function of the CKP hierarchy and non-linearizable Virasoro symmetries

Abstract

We introduce a single tau function that represents the CKP hierarchy into a generalized Hirota "bilinear" equation. The actions on the tau function by additional symmetries for the hierarchy are calculated, which involve strictly more than a central extension of the $w^C_\infty$-algebra. As an application, for Drinfeld-Sokolov hierarchies of type C that are equivalent to certain reductions of the CKP hierarchy, their Virasoro symmetries are proved to be non-linearizable when acting on the tau function.