Differential elimination with Dixon resultants

In this paper we apply the idea of Dixon resultant to algebraic differential equations and introduce the Dixon differential resultant. We prove that a necessary condition for the existence of a common solution of two algebraic differential equations is that the differential resultant is equal to zero, which actually provides a method of elimination and reduces a system of multi-variate differential equations to a system of single-variate differential equations. This result is also generalized to the system of n differential polynomials. We give algorithms to realize our method of elimination for systems of differential equations. Our results and algorithms are demonstrated by some examples. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.