Solution manifolds of differential systems with discrete stated-dependent delays are almost graphs (Q6107787)

The paper investigates the structure of the solution manifold \[ X_f = \{\phi \in U \subset C^1 \, |\, \dot \phi(0) = f(\phi)\} \] (the appropriate state space) for a class of state-dependent delay equations of the type \(\dot x(t) = f(x_t) \). These take the more concrete form \[ \dot x(t) = g[ x( t- d_1(Lx_t)), \dots, x(t- d_k(Lx_t))], \] where \(x(t) \in \mathbb{R}^n\), and the delay functionals factor over the same linear operator \(L\) with finite-dimensional range. A so called almost-graph representation over the codimension-\(n\)-space \(X_0 = \{ \phi \in C^1 \mid \dot \phi(0) = 0\}\) is obtained. This is essentially a diffeomorphic `projection' of \(X_f\) onto a subset of \(X_0\), where the kernel direction of the projection depends on the point. With \( \hat \phi := [\phi(-d_1(L\phi)), \dots, \phi(- d_k(L\phi))]\), the expression for this `projection' takes the form \(A(\phi) = \phi - g(\hat \phi) \cdot H(\hat \phi)\), with \(H\) containing appropriately chosen functions from the kernel of the operator \(L\). Contrary to earlier work, the more general assumptions in this paper have the consequence that \(\hat \phi \neq \widehat{A(\phi)}\) in general, but the difference is still small in appropriate sense. This is an important technical novelty of the paper, and gives a short construction of an almost graph representation even for delay functionals that may have zeroes. (In earlier work, a delay either had to be identically zero, corresponding to an ODE-like term, or always positive.)