In this paper we consider periodic Dirac operators with skew-adjoint potentials in a large class of weighted Sobolev spaces. We characterize the smoothness of such potentials by asymptotic properties of the periodic spectrum of the corresponding Dirac operators.

We prove that the Birkhoff map $\Om$ for KdV constructed on $H^{-1}_0(\T)$ can be interpolated between $H^{-1}_0(\T)$ and $L^2_0(\T)$. In particular, the symplectic phase space $H^{1/2}_0(\T)$ can be described in terms of Birkhoff coordinates. As an application, we characterize the regularity of a potential $q\in H^{-1}(\T)$ in terms of the decay of the gap lengths of the periodic spectrum of Hill's operator on the interval $[0,2]$.