Invariant Painlevé analysis of partial differential equations

Abstract The whole Painleve analysis of PDEs is shown to be invariant under an arbitrary homographic transformation of the function ϕ defining the singularity manifold. The best expansion function is ϰ = ( ϕ x ϕ − ϕ xx 2ϕ x ) -1 . This solves the ques tion of invariance under the Mobius group in Painleve analysis and explains naturally Backlund transformation between solutions.