TheLMS Hardy Lecture: The famous inverse scattering transform method and its less famous discrete version

Abstract: The simplest solutions of integrable systems are special functions that have been known since the time of Newton, Gauss and Euler. These functions satisfy not only differential equations as functions of their independent variable but also difference equations as functions of their parameter(s).  We show how the inverse scattering transform method, which was invented to solve the Korteweg-de Vries equation, can be extended to its discrete version.

S.Butler and N.Joshi, An inverse scattering transform for the lattice potential KdV equation, Inverse Problems 26 (2010) 115012 (28pp)