Invariant curves for the discretised van der Pol equation (Q2359758)

It is well known that the stiff van der Pol equation has a strongly attractive limit cycle. In this paper it is shown that the Euler method applied to the van der Pol equation with small step size (small compared to the perturbation parameter) admits an attractive invariant closed curve close to the limit cycle. To describe closed curves in the vicinity of the limit cycle, \(14\) charts are introduced. A general graph transform result is derived and applied in these charts. The proof of the main result relies on the contraction principle in a suitable function space. Estimates are given for the distance of the invariant curve to the limit cycle. In this paper the authors consider the singularly perturbed system \[ \begin{aligned} \dfrac{dx}{dt} & =y,\\ \varepsilon^{3}\dfrac{dy}{dt} &= y-y^3-x, \qquad \left(0< \varepsilon < \varepsilon_{0}\ll 1\right). \end{aligned} \] It is already known that numerical one-step methods with step size of order \(\varepsilon^{2}\) applied to this ODE admit an invariant manifold in the vicinity of the so-called fold point \((2/3, 1)\). While in former works only the vicinity of the fold point was discussed, here the authors take another set of charts not using the blow-up approach. They treat \(\varepsilon\) as a parameter and not as a variable. Obviously the above system can be transformed into the following one \[ \begin{aligned} \dfrac{dx}{d\tau}&=\varepsilon^{3},\\ \dfrac{dy}{d\tau}&= y-\frac{y^3}{3}-x, \qquad \left(0< \varepsilon < \varepsilon_{0}\ll 1\right). \end{aligned} \] The Euler method applied to this system with step size \(h\) yields the map \[ \begin{pmatrix} x \\ y \end{pmatrix} \mapsto \begin{pmatrix} \tilde{x} \\ \tilde{y} \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} x \\ y \end{pmatrix} + h \begin{pmatrix} \varepsilon^{3}y \\ y-\frac{y^{3}}{3}-x \end{pmatrix}. \] The main result of the paper is Theorem 2.1, which is the following: there exist positive numbers \(\varepsilon_{0}\) and \(h_{0}\) such that for \(\varepsilon\in ]0, \varepsilon_{0}]\) and \(h\in ]0, h_{0}]\) the above map, obtained by applying the explicit Euler method with step size \(h\) to the van der Pol equation, admits an attractive invariant curve \(\mathscr{M}_{\varepsilon, h}\) . The curve \(\mathscr{M}_{\varepsilon, h}\) is described in \(14\) charts \(\Phi_{i}, i=1, \ldots, 14\), explicitly given in the fifth section of the paper. In every \(\Phi_{i}, i=1, \ldots, 14\), the invariant curve is given as the graph of a function.