Integration of PDEs by differential geometric means

Abstract

We use Vessiot theory and exterior calculus to solve partial differential equations(PDEs) of the type uyy = F(x, y,u,ux,uy,uxx,uxy) and associated evolution equations. These equations are represented by the Vessiot distribution of vector fields. We develop and apply an algorithm to find the largest integrable sub-distributions and hence solutions of the PDEs. We then apply the integrating factor technique [19] to integrate this integrable Vessiot sub-distribution. The method is successfully applied to a large class of linear and non-linear PDEs.