A new method to find homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits

摘要

A new series method is provided for continuous-time autonomous dynamical systems, which can find exact orbits as opposed to approximate ones. The method can reduce the connecting orbit problem as a boundary value problem in an infinite time domain to the initial value problem. It consists of transforming time to the logarithmic scale, substituting a power series around each fixed point of interest for each of the unknown functions into the system, and equating the corresponding coefficients. When solving for the power series coefficients, additional parameters are used in order to find the intersections of the unstable manifold and the stable manifold of the equilibria. This paper demonstrates how the new method allows to obtain heteroclinic and homoclinic orbits in some well-known cases, such as Nagumo system, stretch-twist-fold flow or mathematical pendulum.