Hyperdeterminants as integrable discrete systems

We give the basic definitions and some theoretical results about hyperdeterminants, introduced by A Cayley in 1845. We prove integrability (understood as 4D consistency) of a nonlinear difference equation defined by the 2 x 2 x 2-hyperdeterminant. This result gives rise to the following hypothesis: the difference equations defined by hyperdeterminants of any size are integrable. We show that this hypothesis already fails in the case of the 2 x 2 x 2 x 2-hyperdeterminant.