A LAX REPRESENTATION FOR THE BORN-INFELD EQUATION

We study the Born-Infeld equation from a Lagrangian point of view emph asizing the duality symmetry present in such systems. We obtain the Ha miltonian formulation directly from the Lagrangian. We also show that this system admits a dispersionless nonstandard Lax representation whi ch directly leads to all the conserved charges (including the ones not previously obtained). We also present the generating function for the se charges and point out various other properties of this system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.