Existence of a cylinder foliated by periodic orbits in the generalized Chazy differential equation

Abstract

The generalized Chazy differential equation corresponds to the following two-parameter family of differential equations \begin{equation*}\label{gcdeq} \dddot x+|x|^q \ddot x+\dfrac{k |x|^q}{x}\dot x^2=0, \end{equation*} which has its regularity varying with $q$ , a positive integer. Indeed, for $q=1$ it is discontinuous on the straight line $x=0$, whereas for $q$ a positive even integer it is polynomial, and for $q>1$ a positive odd integer it is continuous but not differentiable on the straight line $x=0$. In 1999, the existence of periodic solutions in the generalized Chazy differential equation was numerically observed for $q=2$ and $k=3$. In this paper, we prove analytically the existence of such periodic solutions. Our strategy allows to establish sufficient conditions ensuring that the generalized Chazy differential equation, for $k=q+1$ and any positive integer $q$ , has actually an invariant topological cylinder foliated by periodic solutions in the $(x,\dot{x},\ddot{x})$-space. In order to set forth the bases of our approach, we start by considering $q=1,2,3$, which are representatives of the different classes of regularity. For an arbitrary positive integer $q$, an algorithm is provided for checking the sufficient conditions for the existence of such an invariant cylinder, which we conjecture that always exists. The algorithm was successfully applied up to $q=100$.