HERMITIAN VERSUS ANTIHERMITIAN ONE-MATRIX MODELS AND THEIR HIERARCHIES

Building on a recent work of C. Crnkovic, M. Douglas and G. Moore, a study of multi-critical multi-cut one-matrix models and their associated sl(2, C) integrable hierarchies, is further pursued. The double-scaling limits of hermitian matrix models with different scaling ansatze, lead to the KdV hierarchy, to the modified KdV hierarchy and part of the non-linear Schrodinger hierarchy. Instead, the anti-hermitian matrix model, in the 2-arc sector, results in the Zakharov-Shabat hierarchy, which contains both KdV and mKdV as reductions. For all the hierarchies it is found that the Virasoro constraints act on the associated tau-functions. Whereas it is known that the ZS and KdV models lead to the Virasoro constraints of an sl(2, C) vacuum, we find that the mKdV model leads to the Virasoro constraints of a highest-weight state with arbitrary conformal dimension.