Discrete Hirota reductions associated with the lattice KdV equation

Abstract: We study the integrability of a family of birational maps obtained as reductions of the discrete Hirota equation, which are related to travelling wave solutions of the lattice KdV equation. In particular, for reductions corresponding to waves moving with rational speed N/M on the lattice, where N,M are coprime integers, we prove the Liouville integrability of the maps when N + M is odd, and prove various properties of the general case. There are two main ingredients to our construction: the cluster algebra associated with each of the Hirota bilinear equations, which provides invariant (pre)symplectic and Poisson structures; and the connection of the monodromy matrices of the dressing chain with those of the KdV travelling wave reductions.