In the last few decades the theory of ordinary differential equations has grown rapidly under the action of forces which have been working both from within and without: from within, as a development and deepen ing of the concepts and of the topological and analytical methods brought about by LYAPUNOV, POINCARE, BENDIXSON, and a few others at the turn of the century; from without, in the wake of the technological development, particularly in communications, servomechanisms, auto matic controls, and electronics. The early research of the authors just mentioned lay in challenging problems of astronomy, but the line of thought thus produced found the most impressive applications in the new fields. The body of research now accumulated is overwhelming, and many books and reports have appeared on one or another of the multiple aspects of the new line of research which some authors call" qualitative theory of differential equations". The purpose of the present volume is to present many of the view points and questions in a readable short report for which completeness is not claimed. The bibliographical notes in each section are intended to be a guide to more detailed expositions and to the original papers. Some traditional topics such as the Sturm comparison theory have been omitted. Also excluded were all those papers, dealing with special differential equations motivated by and intended for the applications.

The book gives the practical means of finding asymptotic solutions to differential equations, and relates WKB methods, integral solutions, Kruskal-Newton diagrams, and boundary layer theory to one another. The construction of integral solutions and analytic continuation are used in conjunction with the asymptotic analysis, to show the interrelatedness of these methods. Some of the functions of classical analysis are used as examples, to provide an introduction to their analytic and asymptotic properties, and to give derivations of some of the important identities satisfied by them. The emphasis is on the various techniques of analysis: obtaining asymptotic limits, connecting different asymptotic solutions, and obtaining integral representation.

In this book we present the main results on the asymptotic theory of ordinary linear differential equations and systems where there is a small parameter in the higher derivatives. We are concerned with the behaviour of solutions with respect to the parameter and for large values of the independent variable. The literature on this question is considerable and widely dispersed, but the methods of proofs are sufficiently similar for this material to be put together as a reference book. We have restricted ourselves to homogeneous equations. The asymptotic behaviour of an inhomogeneous equation can be obtained from the asymptotic behaviour of the corresponding fundamental system of solutions by applying methods for deriving asymptotic bounds on the relevant integrals. We systematically use the concept of an asymptotic expansion, details of which can if necessary be found in [Wasow 2, Olver 6]. By the "formal asymptotic solution" (F.A.S.) is understood a function which satisfies the equation to some degree of accuracy. Although this concept is not precisely defined, its meaning is always clear from the context. We also note that the term "Stokes line" used in the book is equivalent to the term "anti-Stokes line" employed in the physics literature.

Stability of Differential Equations with Aftereffect presents stability theory for differential equations concentrating on functional differential equations with delay, integro-differential equations, and related topics. The authors provide background material on the modern theory of functional differential equations and introduce some new flexible

Differential equations with random perturbations are the mathematical models of real-world processes that cannot be described via deterministic laws, and their evolution depends on random factors. The modern theory of differential equations with random perturbations is on the edge of two mathematical disciplines: random processes and ordinary differential equations. Consequently, the sources of these methods come both from the theory of random processes and from the classic theory of differential equations.This work focuses on the approach to stochastic equations from the perspective of ordinary differential equations. For this purpose, both asymptotic and qualitative methods which appeared in the classical theory of differential equations and nonlinear mechanics are developed.