Abstract. We present Bäcklund transformations for the non-commutative antiself-dual Yang-Mills equations where the gauge group is G = GL(2) and use it to generate a series of exact solutions from a simple seed solution. The solutions generated by this approach are represented in terms of quasi-determinants and belong to a noncommutative version of the Atiyah-Ward ansatz. In the commutative limit, our results coincide with those by Corrigan, Fairlie, Yates and Goddard.2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. 35Q58, 46L55, 70S15.
Introduction.Non-commutative (NC) extensions of integrable systems and soliton theory have been studied intensively for the last few years in various contexts of both mathematics and physics (for reviews, see, e.g. [22]). In particular, the extension to NC spaces has drawn much attention in physics, because in gauge theories this kind of NC extension corresponds to the presence of background magnetic fields, and various applications have been made successfully (for reviews, see, e.g. [21]).In commutative gauge theories, the anti-self-dual Yang-Mills (ASDYM) equation is quite important. The finite-action solutions, that is the instanton solutions, play key roles in field theories and in four-dimensional geometry. In integrable systems, it is also very important since many lower-dimensional integrable equations such as the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) [15], and therefore it is now worth studying the integrable aspects of the NC ASDYM equation in detail and applying the results to lower-dimensional integrable equations.