Yangians and Classical Lie Algebras, Part II. Sklyanin determinant, Laplace operators and characteristic identities

We study the structure of quantized enveloping algebras called twisted Yangians, which are naturally associated with the B, C, and D series of the classical Lie algebras. We obtain an explicit formula for the formal series (the Sklyanin determinant) whose coefficients are free generators of the center of the twisted Yangian. As a corollary we obtain a new system of algebraically independent generators of the center of the universal enveloping algebra for the orthogonal and symplectic Lie algebras and find the characteristic polynomial for the matrix formed by the generators of these Lie algebras.