Well-posedness of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili hierarchy, Mulase factorization, and Fr\"olicher Lie groups

We recall the notions of Fr"olicher and diffeological spaces and we build regular Fr"olicher Lie groups and Lie algebras of formal pseudo-differential operators in one independent variable. Combining these constructions with a smooth version of the Mulase factorization of infinite dimensional groups based on formal pseudo-differential operators, we present two proofs of the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) hierarchy in a smooth category. We also generalize these results to a KP hierarchy modelled on formal pseudo-differential operators with coefficients which are series in formal parameters, describe a rigorous derivation of the Hamiltonian interpretation of the KP hierarchy, and discuss how solutions depending on formal parameters can lead to sequences of functions converging to a class of solutions of the standard KP-I equation.