arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Massimo Villarini.
A celebrated theorem of Lagrange states that a solution of the wave equation with one-dimensional space variable is the uniform limit, as N tends to infinity, of a second order ODE obtained from a mechanical model discretizing a string as N identical harmonic oscillators. Answering to a question posed by G. Gallavotti we generalize this result to the case of any space dimension.
Let $X$ be a polynomial vector field in $\mathbb{R}^2$ which, after one-point compactification of the plane, has a punctured neighbourhood $\dot U$ of the point at infinity which is foliated by closed orbits of $X$. If the period function of $X$ in $\dot U$ is bounded from below by a positive constant, $X$ is necessarily linear, hence conjugated, up to a nonzero constant factor, to $-y \frac{\partial}{\partial x} + x \frac{\partial}{\partial y}$. This result answers to a question posed by J. Llibre , proving e.g. that a global isochronous center is linear.
We show that a smooth 1-parameter family of foliations by circles of a closed 3-manifold, deforming the foliation whose leaves are the fibers of a circle bundle, is trivial, i.e. all the foliations of the family arise from circle bundles isomorphic to the unperturbed one, if a continuity property of the Seifert leaves of the perturbation holds true. This rigidity property is true for any real analytic 1-parameter family of foliations by circles when the base space of the circle bundle defining the unperturbed foliation is not a torus. The dimensionality hypothesis is discussed in relation to an example by Thurston of a vector field on a closed 5-manifold whose orbits are closed, with unbounded lenght.
We will give an example of a smooth free action of $S^1=U(1)$ on $S^7$ whose orbits have unbounded lenghts (equivalently: unbounded periods). As an application of this example we construct a $C^{\infty}$ vector field $X$, defined in a neighbourhood $U$ of $0 \in \mathbb{R}^8$, such that: $U-\{0\}$ is foliated by closed integral curves of $X$, the differential $DX(0)$ at $0$ defines a $1$-parameter group of nondegenerate rotations and $X$ is {\it not} orbitally equivalent to its linearization. This proves in the $C^{\infty}$ category that the classical Poincaré Centre Theorem, true for planar nondegenerate centres, is not generalizable to multicentres.