A combinatorial approach to nonlinear functional expansions: An introduction with an example (Q1174719)

A new approach is presented to causal functionals by introducing combinatorial interpretations of the solutions of nonlinear differential equations with forcing terms. This theory parallels the algebraic approach with formal power series in noncommutative variables. Certain combinatorial objects called weighted increasing trees, weighted paths and histories are used to develop the approach. Efficient algorithms are given for the computation of the corresponding Volterra kernels and a nonlinear circuit is given as an example.