There are three linear systems of ordinary differential equations that we now solve explicitly using matrix exponentials. Remarkably, in a sense to be made precise, these are the only linear planar systems. The three systems are listed in Table ??.





name equations closed form solution



(a)



(b)



(c)




Table 1: Solutions to normal form ODEs with .

The verification of Table ??(a) follows from (??), but it just reproduces earlier work in Section ?? where we considered uncoupled systems of two ordinary differential equations. To verify the solutions to (b) and (c), we need to prove:

Proof
Note that (??) implies that
Identity (??) is verified when using associativity of matrix multiplication, as follows The argument for general is identical. Identity (??) follows directly from (??) and the power series definition of matrix exponentials (??).

We use Theorem ?? to complete the proof of this proposition. Recall that is the unique solution to the initial value problem

We claim that is another solution to this equation. Certainly . It follows from (??) that Thus the product rule together with (??) imply that
Thus and . Since is arbitrary it follows that Evaluating at yields the desired result.
Verification of Table ??(b)

We begin by noting that the matrix in (b) is where Since , it follows from Proposition ?? that Thus (??) and (??) imply

and (b) is verified.
Verification of Table ??(c)

To determine the solutions to Table ??(c), observe that where Since , Proposition ?? implies

by (??) and (??).
Summary

The normal form matrices in Table ?? are characterized by the number of linearly independent real eigenvectors. We summarize this information in Table ??. We show, in Section ??, that any planar linear system of ODEs can be solved just by noting how many independent eigenvectors the corresponding matrix has; general solutions are found by transforming the equations into one of the three types of equations listed in Table ??.





Matrix Number of Real Eigenvectors Reference



two linearly independent Section ??



none Chapter ??, (??)



one linearly independent Lemma ??




Table 2: Number of linearly independent real eigenvectors.

Exercises

Solve the initial value problem where .
Solve the initial value problem where .
Let be an matrix such that . Compute where .
Use pplane5 to plot phase plane portraits for each of the three types of linear systems (a), (b) and (c) in Table ??. Based on this computer exploration answer the following questions:
  • If a solution to that system spirals about the origin, is the system of differential equations of type (a), (b) or (c)?
  • How many eigendirections are there for equations of type (c)?
  • Let be a solution to one of these three types of systems and suppose that oscillates up and down infinitely often. Then is a solution for which type of system?