Hamiltonian structures for integrable nonabelian difference equations

In this paper we extensively study the notion of Hamiltonian structure for nonabelian differential-difference systems, exploring the link between the different algebraic (in terms of double Poisson algebras and vertex algebras) and geometric (in terms of nonabelian Poisson bivectors) definitions. We introduce multiplicative double Poisson vertex algebras (PVAs) as the suitable noncommutative counterpart to multiplicative PVAs, used to describe Hamiltonian differential-difference equations in the commutative setting, and prove that these algebras are in one-to-one correspondence with the Poisson structures defined by difference operators, providing a sufficient condition for the fulfilment of the Jacobi identity. Moreover, we define nonabelian polyvector fields and their Schouten brackets, for both finitely generated noncommutative algebras and infinitely generated difference ones: this allows us to provide a unified characterisation of Poisson bivectors and double quasi-Poisson algebra structures. Finally, as an application we obtain some results towards the classification of local scalar Hamiltonian difference structures and construct the Hamiltonian structures for the nonabelian Kaup, Ablowitz–Ladik and Chen–Lee-Liu integrable lattices.