On deformations of multidimensional Poisson brackets of hydrodynamic type

The theory of Poisson Vertex Algebras (PVAs) is a good framework to treat Hamiltonian partial differential equations. A PVA consists of a pair $(\mathcal{A},\{\cdot_\lambda\cdot\})$ of a differential algebra $\mathcal{A}$ and a bilinear operation called the $\lambda$-bracket. We extend the definition to the class of algebras $\mathcal{A}$ endowed with $d\geq1$ commuting derivations. We call this structure a \emph{multidimensional PVA}: it is a suitable setting to study Hamiltonian PDEs with $d$ spatial dimensions. We apply this theory to the study of deformations of the Poisson brackets of hydrodynamic type for $d=2$.