Numerical Taylor expansions for invariant manifolds (Q706223)

The authors consider the numerical computation of Taylor expansions of invariant manifolds around equilibria of flows and fixed points of maps. As in other approaches, the computations are based on the homological equations for the flow or map when decomposed along a linear splitting of the state space. However, earlier papers used symbolic (or numerical or automatic) derivation of the flow or map in the equilibrium or fixed point along the split subspaces. The present authors avoid this by evaluating the truncated functional equation in a number of different points, setting up in this way a system of nonlinear equations which can be solved by a Newton-like method. The conditions for the unique solvability of the equations for the coefficients of the Taylor expansion are weaker than the gap condition for the existence of the smooth manifold. The paper contains full numerical details, including a detailed study of the numerical linear algebra problems (the Sylvester equation, preservation of sparsity, block elimination methods). The results are tested extensively in four examples.