Periodic orbits of delay differential equations under discretization (Q1387240)

The authors consider the long-time behaviour of numerical solutions of delay differential equations that have asymptotically stable periodic orbits. It is proved that Runge-Kutta methods applied to such equations have attractive invariant curves which approximate the periodic orbit with the order of the method. A similar theorem is known for ordinary differential equations with asymptotically stable periodic orbits, but in the case of delay equations the proof encounters a number of difficulties not presented in the case of ordinary differential equations. This main result is illustrated by numerical experiments with the delay logistic equation. Moreover, the authors give the required finite-time error bounds for both smooth and nonsmooth initial data. Some considerations of attractive invariant manifolds and their perturbations are also presented.