Contact Lax pairs and associated (3+1)-dimensional integrable dispersionless systems

Abstract

We review the recent approach to the construction of (3+1)-dimensional integrable dispersionless partial differential systems based on their contact Lax pairs and the related $R$-matrix theory for the Lie algebra of functions with respect to the contact bracket. We discuss various kinds of Lax representations for such systems, in particular, linear nonisospectral contact Lax pairs and nonlinear contact Lax pairs as well as the relations among the two. Finally, we present a large number of examples with finite and infinite number of dependent variables, as well as the reductions of these examples to lower-dimensional integrable dispersionless systems.