Computation of the simplest normal forms with perturbation parameters based on Lie transform and rescaling

Normal form theory is one of the most power tools for the study of nonlinear di.erential equations, in particular, for stability and bifurcation analysis. Recently, many researchers have paid attention to further reduction of conventional normal forms (CNF) to so called the simplest normal form (SNF). However, the computation of normal forms has been restricted to systems which do not contain perturbation parameters (unfolding). The computation of the SNF is more involved than that of CNFs, and the computation of the SNF with unfolding is even more complicated than the SNF without unfolding. Although some author mentioned further reduction of the SNF, no results have been reported on the exact computation of the SNF of systems with perturbation parameters. This paper presents an e6cient method for computing the SNF of di.erential equations with perturbation parameters. Unlike CNF theory which uses an independent nonlinear transformation at each order, this approach uses a consistent nonlinear transformation through all order computations. The particular advantage of the method is able to provide an e6cient recursive formula which can be used to obtain the nth-order equations containing the nth-order terms only. This greatly saves computational time and computer memory. The recursive formulations have been implemented on computer systems using Maple. As an illustrative example, the SNF for single zero singularity is considered using the new approach. c © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. MSC: 34C20; 58F36; 34A34