Analytic continuation of Taylor series and the boundary value problems of some nonlinear ordinary differential equations

Abstract We compare and discuss the respective efficiency of three methods (with two variants for each of them), based respectively on Taylor (Maclaurin) series, Pade approximants and conformal mappings, for solving quasi-analytically a two-point boundary value problem of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE). Six configurations of ODE and boundary conditions are successively considered according to the increasing difficulties that they present. After having indicated that the Taylor series method almost always requires the recourse to analytical continuation procedures to be efficient, we use the complementarity of the two remaining methods (Pade and conformal mapping) to illustrate their respective advantages and limitations. We emphasize the importance of the existence of solutions with movable singularities for the efficiency of the methods, particularly for the so-called Pade–Hankel method. (We show that this latter method is equivalent to pushing a movable pole to infinity.) For each configuration, we determine the singularity distribution (in the complex plane of the independent variable) of the solution sought and show how this distribution controls the efficiency of the two methods. In general the method based on Pade approximants is easy to use and robust but may be awkward in some circumstances whereas the conformal mapping method is a very fine method which should be used when high accuracy is required.