On the complete integrability and linearization of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. II. Third-order equations

Abstract

We introduce a method for finding general solutions of third-order nonlinear differential equations by extending the modified Prelle–Singer method. We describe a procedure to deduce all the integrals of motion associated with the given equation, so that the general solution follows straightforwardly from these integrals. The method is illustrated with several examples. Further, we propose a powerful method of identifying linearizing transformations. The proposed method not only unifies all the known linearizing transformations systematically but also introduces a new and generalized linearizing transformation. In addition to the above, we provide an algorithm to invert the non-local linearizing transformation. Through this procedure the general solution for the original nonlinear equation can be obtained from the solution of the linear ordinary differential equation.