Differential-Difference Equations Associated with the Fractional Lax Operators

We study integrable hierarchies associated with spectral problems of the form P psi = lambda Q psi, where P and Q are difference operators. The corresponding nonlinear differential-difference equations can be viewed as inhomogeneous generalizations of the Bogoyavlensky-type lattices. While the latter turn into the Korteweg-de Vries equation under the continuous limit, the lattices under consideration provide discrete analogs of the Sawada-Kotera and Kaup-Kupershmidt equations. The r-matrix formulation and several of the simplest explicit solutions are presented.