Electronic Journal of Differential Equations (Sep 2012)
Stable piecewise polynomial vector fields
Abstract
Let $N={y>0}$ and $S={y<0}$ be the semi-planes of $mathbb{R}^2$ having as common boundary the line $D={y=0}$. Let $X$ and $Y$ be polynomial vector fields defined in $N$ and $S$, respectively, leading to a discontinuous piecewise polynomial vector field $Z=(X,Y)$. This work pursues the stability and the transition analysis of solutions of $Z$ between $N$ and $S$, started by Filippov (1988) and Kozlova (1984) and reformulated by Sotomayor-Teixeira (1995) in terms of the regularization method. This method consists in analyzing a one parameter family of continuous vector fields $Z_{epsilon}$, defined by averaging $X$ and $Y$. This family approaches $Z$ when the parameter goes to zero. The results of Sotomayor-Teixeira and Sotomayor-Machado (2002) providing conditions on $(X,Y)$ for the regularized vector fields to be structurally stable on planar compact connected regions are extended to discontinuous piecewise polynomial vector fields on $mathbb{R}^2$. Pertinent genericity results for vector fields satisfying the above stability conditions are also extended to the present case. A procedure for the study of discontinuous piecewise vector fields at infinity through a compactification is proposed here.
