Central invariants revisited

Abstract

We use refined spectral sequence arguments to calculate known and previously unknown bi-Hamiltonian cohomology groups, which govern the deformation theory of semi-simple bi-Hamiltonian pencils of hydrodynamic type with one independent and \( N\) dependent variables. In particular, we rederive the result of Dubrovin-Liu-Zhang that these deformations are parametrized by the so-called central invariants, which are \( N\) smooth functions of one variable.