Status of the KEKB accelerator and the detector, BELLE, is reported. The construction of the 3.5 Gev x 8 GeV electron-positron collider, and the solenoid detector, BELLE, was completed in December, 1998. The commissioning of them has been made since then. The BELLE detector has observed the first hadronic event from the beam collision on Jun 1, 1999. The achieved maximum luminosity by August 4th, 1999, was 3 x 10^32 cm^-2 sec^-1. The KEKB operation will be continued after two months of summer break.

Fumihiko Takasaki

Present state of the study of nonlinear ``integrable" systems related to the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms on various surfaces is overviewed. Roles of area-preserving diffeomorphisms in 4-d self-dual gravity are reviewed. Recent progress in new members of this family, the SDiff(2) KP and Toda hierarchies, is reported. The group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms on a cylinder plays a key role just as the infinite matrix group GL($\infty$) does in the ordinary KP and Toda lattice hierarchies. The notion of tau functions is also shown to persist in these hierarchies, and gives rise to a central extension of the corresponding Lie algebra.

Kanehisa Takasaki

A group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms in 3D turns out to play a key role in an Einstein-Maxwell theory whose Weyl tensor is selfdual and whose Maxwell tensor has algebraically general anti-selfdual part. This model was first introduced by Flaherty and recently studied by Park as an integrable deformation of selfdual gravity. A twisted volume form on the corresponding twistor space is shown to be the origin of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. An immediate consequence is the existence of an infinite number of symmetries as a generalization of $w_{1+\infty}$ symmetries in selfdual gravity. A possible relation to Witten's 2D string theory is pointed out.

Kanehisa Takasaki

The exact solution of $N=2$ supersymmetric $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory is studied in the framework of the Whitham hierarchies. The solution is identified with a homogeneous solution of a Whitham hierarchy. This integrable hierarchy (Whitham-Toda hierarchy) describes modulation of a quasi-periodic solution of the (generalized) Toda lattice hierarchy associated with the hyperelliptic curves over the quantum moduli space. The relation between the holomorphic pre-potential of the low energy effective action and the $\tau$ function of the (generalized) Toda lattice hierarchy is also clarified.

Toshio Nakatsu Kanehisa Takasaki

We review new aspects of integrable systems discovered recently in N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories and their topologically twisted versions. The main topics are (i) an explicit construction of Whitham deformations of the Seiberg-Witten curves for classical gauge groups, (ii) its application to contact terms in the u-plane integral of topologically twisted theories, and (iii) a connection between the tau functions and the blowup formula in topologically twisted theories.

Kanehisa Takasaki

The dispersionless KP and Toda hierarchies possess an underlying twistorial structure. A twistorial approach is partly implemented by the method of Riemann-Hilbert problem. This is however still short of clarifying geometric ingredients of twistor theory, such as twistor lines and twistor surfaces. A more geometric approach can be developed in a Hamilton-Jacobi formalism of Gibbons and Kodama. AMS Subject Classifiation (1991): 35Q20, 58F07,70H99

Partha Guha Kanehisa Takasaki

The extended Toda hierarchy of Carlet, Dubrovin and Zhang is reconsidered in the light of a 2+1D extension of the 1D Toda hierarchy constructed by Ogawa. These two extensions of the 1D Toda hierarchy turn out to have a very similar structure, and the former may be thought of as a kind of dimensional reduction of the latter. In particular, this explains an origin of the mysterious structure of the bilinear formalism proposed by Milanov.

Kanehisa Takasaki

Recent work of Foda and his group on a connection between classical integrable hierarchies (the KP and 2D Toda hierarchies) and some quantum integrable systems (the 6-vertex model with DWBC, the finite XXZ chain of spin 1/2, the phase model on a finite chain, etc.) is reviewed. Some additional information on this issue is also presented.

Kanehisa Takasaki

We prove that if G is an abelian group of odd order then there is an isomorphism from the second quandle homology of the Takasaki quandle of G to the exterior square of G. In particular, for G=Z_k^n, k odd, we obtain Z_k^{n(n-1)/2}. Nontrivial second homology allows us to use 2-cocycles to construct new quandles from T(G), and to construct link invariants.

Maciej Niebrzydowski Jozef H. Przytycki

The quantum torus algebra plays an important role in a special class of solutions of the Toda hierarchy. Typical examples are the solutions related to the melting crystal model of topological strings and 5D SUSY gauge theories. The quantum torus algebra is realized by a 2D complex free fermion system that underlies the Toda hierarchy, and exhibits mysterious "shift symmetries". This article is based on collaboration with Toshio Nakatsu.

Kanehisa Takasaki