Residual symmetries and B\"acklund transformations

Abstract

It is proved that for a given truncated Painlev\'e expansion of an arbitrary nonlinear Painlev\'e integrable system, the residue with respect to the singularity manifold is a nonlocal symmetry. The residual symmetries can be localized to Lie point symmetries after introducing suitable prolonged systems. The finite transformations of the residual symmetries are equivalent to the second type of Darboux-B\"acklund transformations. The once B\"acklund transformations related to the residual symmetries are same for many integrable systems including the Korteweg-de Vries, Kadomtsev-Petviashvili, Boussinesq, Sawada-Kortera and Kaup-Kupershmidt equations. For the Korteweg-de Vries equation, the $n^{th}$ Darboux transformations can also be obtained from the Lie point symmetry approach via the localization of the residual symmetries.