Connection problem for the tau-function of the Sine-Gordon reduction of Painlevé-III equation via the Riemann-Hilbert approach

Abstract: We evaluate explicitly, in terms of the Cauchy data, the constant pre-factor in the large $x$ asymptotics of the Painlev\'e III tau-function. Our result proves the conjectural formula for this pre-factor obtained recently by O. Lisovyy, Y. Tykhyy, and the first co-author with the help of the recently discovered connection of the Painlev\'e tau-functions with the Virasoro conformal blocks. Our approach does not use this connection, and it is based on the Riemann-Hilbert method.