Discrete Crum's Theorems and Integrable Lattice Equations

In this paper, we develop discrete versions of Darboux transformations and Crum's theorems for two second order difference equations. The difference equations are discretised versions (using Darboux transformations) of the spectral problems of the KdV quation, and of the modified KdV equation or sine-Gordon equation. Considering the discrete dynamics created by Darboux transformations for the difference equations, one obtains the lattice potential KdV equation, the lattice potential modified KdV equation and the lattice Schwarzian KdV equation, that are prototypes of integrable lattice equations. It turns out that, along the discretisation processes using Darboux transformations, two families of integrable systems (the KdV family, and the modified KdV or sine-Gordon family), including their continuous, semi-discrete and lattice versions, are explicitly constructed. As direct applications of the discrete Crum's theorems, multi-soliton solutions of the lattice equations are obtained.