Rational solutions of high-order algebraic ordinary differential equations (Q2200135)

I will start this review by stating that for the first time in my life I learned about an algebraic ordinary differential equation (AODE for short) from the paper under review. According to the authors' own definition an AODE is an equation of the form \[ F(x,y,y',\ldots,y^{(n)})=0, \] where \(F\) is a polynomial in the unknown function \(y\) and its derivatives of higher-order with coefficients in the field of rational functions \(\mathbb{K}(x)\) over an algebraically closed field~\(\mathbb{K}\). To make my confusion worse, the above equation is referred to as differential-algebraic equation (DAE) in the Western literature and as algebraic differential equation (ADE) in the Russian literature. Unfortunately, DAE and ADE are not interchangeably used in the Western literature and they seem to mean different things. Definition aside, there is a little confusion about the goal the authors set for themselves. They are interested in the polynomial and rational solutions of the above higher-order AODE equation which even in the first-order case could not be reduced to a standard ODE due to the singularity of the Jacobian~\({\partial F}/{\partial y'}\). Such equations arise in the mathematical modeling of a wide variety of problems from engineering and science. Both initial value and boundary value problems literature on higher-order AODE are lacking, so any results are welcomed by practitioners. The paper is organized into five sections. Section~2 is devoted to a study of order bounds for the poles of a Laurent series solutions to an AODE. Proposition~2.3 proved in this section is the main technical gadget used in later sections. In Section~3, the authors prove a sufficient condition for an AODE to have a degree bound for its polynomial solutions. This result could be considered as a refinement of the works Ref.~14 and Ref.~15. In the same section, the authors also demonstrate that some common classes of low-order AODEs satisfy this condition. Rational solutions of maximally comparable AODEs are considered in Section~4. Finally, in Section~5, the authors undertake painstaking statistical analysis demonstrating that a large percentage (close to 80\%) of commonly considered AODEs from Kamke's well-known collection satisfy the assumptions of the theorems proved.