It is shown that the Hirota derivative can be used to construct the plethysm for tensor products of representations of {sl}_2(k).

Since its elaboration in 1983 by Weiss, Tabor and Carnevale, the method to explicitly build the Bäcklund transformation of a partial differential equation (PDE) from singularity analysis only has been improved in several complementary directions, and at the present time it succeeds for practically all PDEs in 1+1-dimensions. The current state of the art is presented, and the emphasis is put on understanding the method. There are two important stages: first, the definition (identified with a Darboux transformation) of a resummation variable to make the Laurent series a finite one as requested by the definition of the word integrability; second, the link (identified with a linearizing formula to be taken from the classification of Painlevé and Gambier) between this resummation variable and the Lax pair to be found.

In a recent paper we presented a truncation-type method of deriving Bäcklund transformations for ordinary differential equations. This method is based on a consideration of truncation as a mapping that preserves the locations of a natural subset of the movable poles that the equation possesses. Here we apply this approach to the third and fifth Painlevé equations. For the third Painlevé equation we are able to obtain all fundamental Bäcklund transformations for the case where the parameters satisfy \gamma \delta \neq 0. For the fifth Painlevé equation our approach yields what appears to be all known Bäcklund transformations.

Soliton equations whose solutions are expressed by Pfaffians are briefly discussed. Included are a discrete-time Toda equation of BKP type, a modified Toda equation of BKP type, a coupled modified KdV equation and a coupled modified KdV equation of derivative type.

Two coupled bilinear equations are considered, and then two new coupled differential-difference systems are found. Also two special reductions of these two systems are studied. By using Hirota's method, Bäcklund transformation and superposition formulae, soliton solutions to these equations are presented.

Hirota representations of soliton equations have proved veryuseful. They produced many of the known families of multisoliton solutions, andhave often led to a disclosure of the underlying Lax systems and infinite sets ofconserved quantities.

A striking feature is the ease with which direct insight can be gained into thenature of the eigenvalue problem associated with soliton equations derivable from aquadratic Hirota equation (for a single Hirota function), such as the KdV equationor the Boussinesq equation. A key element is the bilinear Bäcklund transformation(BT) which can be obtained straight away from the Hirota representation of theseequations, through decoupling of a related “two field condition” by means of anappropriate constraint of minimal weight. Details of this procedure have beenreported elsewhere. The main point is that bilinear BT's are obtained systematically,without the need of tricky “exchange formulas”. They arise in the formof “Y-systems”, each equation of which belongs to a linear space spanned by a basisof binary Bell polynomials (Y-polynomials).

The N-soliton solution of a generalised Vakhnenko equation is found, where N is an arbitrary positive integer. The solution, which is obtained by using a blend of transformations of the independent variables and Hirota's method, is expressed in terms of a Moloney & Hodnett (1989) type decomposition. Different types of soliton are possible, namely loops, humps or cusps. Details of the different types of interactions between solitons, including resonant soliton interactions, are discussed in detail for the case N=2. A proof of the ‘N-soliton condition’ is given in the Appendix.

Conserved quantities of box and ball system(BBS) are presented from the hungry Toda molecule equation, an inverse ultra-discrete limit of the BBS.

By using the bilinear technique of soliton theory, a pfaffian version of the SU(2) self-dual Yang-Mills equation and its solution is constructed.

We present a general scheme to derive higher-order members of the Painlevé VI (PVI) hierarchy of ODE's as well as their difference analogues. The derivation is based on a discrete structure that sits on the background of the PVI equation and that consists of a system of partial difference equations on a multidimensional lattice. The connection with the isomonodromic Garnier systems is discussed.