Isochronicity and commutation of polynomial vector fields (Q1288098): Difference between revisions

A singular center-type point of a vector field on the real two-dimensional plane is called isochronic if all periodic trajectories close to it have the same period. It was proven by Sabatini that the center of a smooth dynamical system is isochronic if and only if there is another smooth vector field in a punctured neighborhood of the center such that this field commutes with the initial field and is transversal to the latter. The authors also conjectured that this result may be extended to polynomial vector fields. The authors and Sabatini independently established that the system introduced by Devlin has isochronic center but does not admit such a commuting polynomial system and, therefore, gives a counterexample to this conjecture. The authors consider this problem in a more general setting, introducing a new class of polynomial vector fields, which they call Newtonian, and study the corresponding existence problem for an additional commuting polynomial flow. In particular, these systems give many new counterexamples to Sabatini's conjecture. The article contains many interesting examples demonstrating various qualitative properties of isochronic polynomial systems.