DIFFERENTIAL ALGEBRA Lecturer: Alexey Ovchinnikov Thursdays 9:30am-11:40am Website: http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/˜aovchinnikov/ e-mail:
[email protected] written by: Maxwell Shapiro 0. INTRODUCTION There are two main topics we will discuss in these lectures: (I) The core differential algebra: (a) Introduction: We will begin with an introduction to differential algebraic structures, important terms and notation, and a general background needed for this lecture. (b) Differential elimination: Given a system of polynomial partial differential equations (PDE’s for short), we will determine if (i) this system is consistent, or if (ii) another polynomial PDE is a consequence of the system. (iii) If time permits, we will also discuss algorithms will perform (i) and (ii). (II) Differential Galois Theory for linear systems of ordinary differential equations (ODE’s for short). This subject deals with questions of this sort: Given a system d (?) y(x) = A(x)y(x); dx where A(x) is an n × n matrix, find all algebraic relations that a solution of (?) can possibly satisfy. Hrushovski developed an algorithm to solve this for any A(x) with entries in Q¯ (x) (here, Q¯ is the algebraic closure of Q). Example 0.1. Consider the ODE dy(x) 1 = y(x): dx 2x p We know that y(x) = x is a solution to this equation. As such, we can determine an algebraic relation to this ODE to be y2(x) − x = 0: In the previous example, we solved the ODE to determine an algebraic relation. Differential Galois Theory uses methods to find relations without having to solve.