Analytical and numerical dissipativity for nonlinear generalized pantograph equations (Q632365)

Roughly speaking dissipative dynamical systems have the property of possessing a bounded absorbing set where all trajectories enter in a finite time and remain inside. The authors study the analytical and numerical dissipativity of neutral delay differential equations (NDDE) with proportional delay, \[ \begin{cases} x'(t)=g(x(t),x(pt),x'(pt)), & t\geq 0, \\ x(0)=x_0,\end{cases} \] where \(0<p<1\) is a constant (although this system is autonomous, the results of the paper can also be applied to non-autonomous systems). By means of a change of variable of the form \(y(t)=x(e^t)\), \(t\geq \log p\), the authors transform the original system into a NDDE with constant delay \(\tau =-\log p\), \[ \begin{cases} y'(t)= f(t,y(t),y(t-\tau),y'(t-\tau)), & t\geq 0, \\ y(t)=\phi(t), & t\in [-\tau,0].\end{cases} \] A first main result of the paper is that, under suitable hypothesis on \(f\), this system is dissipative and a ball centered at the origin is an absorbing set, which in turn, implies that under sufficient conditions on \(g\) the initial system is also dissipative. Moreover, the theorems proving these results are accompanied by some useful remarks and examples of applicability. The second part of the paper is devoted someway to answer whether a numerical method used to compute trajectories in the original system preserves dissipation or not. The authors provide a definition of dissipativity for a numerical method and prove that the backward Euler method is dissipative for the second system, inheriting this way the numerical method the dissipativity of the original system. This part is complemented with a section on numerical experiments showing results for two examples.