Differential operators on the superline, Berezinians, and Darboux transformations

Abstract: We consider differential operators on a supermanifold of dimension $1|1$. We define non-degenerate operators as those with an invertible top coefficient in the expansion in the "superderivative" $D$ (which is the square root of the shift generator, the partial derivative in an even variable, with the help of an odd indeterminate). They are remarkably similar to ordinary differential operators. We show that every non-degenerate operator can be written in terms of `super Wronskians' (which are certain Berezinians). We apply this to Darboux transformations (DTs), proving that every DT of an arbitrary non-degenerate operator is the composition of elementary first order transformations. Hence every DT corresponds to an invariant subspace of the source operator and, upon a choice of basis in this subspace, is expressed by a super-Wronskian formula. We consider also dressing transformations, i.e., the effect of a DT on the coefficients of the non-degenerate operator. We calculate these transformations in examples and make some general statements.