Duality for systems of conservation laws

Abstract

For one-dimensional systems of conservation laws admitting two additional conservation laws we assign a ruled surface of codimension two in projective space. We call two such systems dual if the corresponding ruled surfaces are dual. We show that a Hamiltonian system is autodual, its ruled surface sits in some quadric, and the generators of this ruled surface form a Legendre submanifold for the contact structure on Fano variety of this quadric. We also give a complete geometric description of 3-component nondiagonalizable systems of Temple class: such systems admit two additional conservation laws, they are dual to systems with constant characteristic speeds, constructed via maximal rank 3-webs of curves in space.