Lagrangian formulation of the Darboux system

Abstract: The classical Darboux system governing rotation coefficients of three-dimensional metrics of diagonal curvature possesses an equivalent formulation as a sixth-order PDE for a scalar potential (related to the corresponding $τ$-function). We demonstrate that this PDE is Lagrangian and can be viewed as an explicit scalar form of the `generating PDE of the KP hierarchy' as discussed recently in Nijhoff [arXiv:2406.13423] in the Lagrangian multiform approach to the Darboux and KP hierarchies. Scalar Lagrangian formulations for differential-difference and fully discrete versions of the Darboux system are also constructed. In the first three cases (continuous and differential-difference with one and two discrete variables), the corresponding Lagrangians are expressible via elementary functions (logarithms), whereas the fully discrete case requires special functions (dilogarithms). Remarkably, dispersionless limits of the above Lagrangians provide a complete list of 3D second-order integrable Lagrangians of the form $\int f(u_{xy}, u_{xt}, u_{yt})\, dxdydt$.