Universal formats for nonlinear ordinary differential systems

Abstract

It is shown that very general nonlinear ordinary differential systems (embracing all that arise in practice) may, first, be brought down to polynomial systems (where the nonlinearities occur only as polynomials in the dependent variables) by introducing suitable new variables into the original system; second, that polynomial systems are reducible to ’’Riccati systems,’’ where the nonlinearities are quadratic at most; third, that Riccati systems may be brought to elemental universal formats containing purely quadratic terms with simple arrays of coefficients that are all zero or unity. The elemental systems have representations as novel types of matrix Riccati equations. Different starting systems and their associated Riccati systems differ from one another, at the final elemental level, in order and in initial data, but not in format.