Invariant manifolds for a singular ordinary differential equation (Q627672)

The paper presents the study of the singular ordinary differential equation \[ \frac{dU}{dt}=\frac{1}{\zeta(U)}\phi_s(U)+\phi_{ns}(U), \tag{1} \] where \(U\in\mathbb R^n\), \(\phi_s\) and \(\phi_{ns}\) are \(C^2\)-functions and \(\zeta\) is a real valued \(C^2\) function. The singularity of equation (1) manifests itself in the fact that \(\zeta(U)\) can attain the value 0. The focus is on solutions of (1) belonging to a small neighborhood of a point \(\tilde U\) such that \(\phi_s(\tilde U)=\phi_{ns}(\tilde U)=0\) and \(\zeta(\tilde U)=0\). The primary goal is the existence of locally invariant manifolds of (1) with prescribed asymptotic behavior. Under suitable hypotheses on the set \(\{U:\zeta(U)=0\}\), well-known definitions of center, center-stable and uniformly stable manifolds are extended for the singular equation (1). It is shown that solutions of (1) lying on each of these manifolds are regular. This is not trivial since examples show that, in general, solutions of (1) are not continuously differentiable. A decomposition result is obtained for a center stable and for the uniformly stable manifold. As an application of the analysis, the viscous profiles with small total variation for a class of mixed hyperbolic-parabolic systems in one space variable are considered. It should be noted that such a class includes the compressible Navier-Stokes equation.