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Concept
Bernoulli differential equation
Summary
In mathematics, an ordinary differential equation is called a Bernoulli differential equation if it is of the form
where is a real number. Some authors allow any real , whereas others require that not be 0 or 1. The equation was first discussed in a work of 1695 by Jacob Bernoulli, after whom it is named. The earliest solution, however, was offered by Gottfried Leibniz, who published his result in the same year and whose method is the one still used today.
Bernoulli equations are special because they are nonlinear differential equations with known exact solutions. A notable special case of the Bernoulli equation is the logistic differential equation.
When , the differential equation is linear. When , it is separable. In these cases, standard techniques for solving equations of those forms can be applied. For and , the substitution reduces any Bernoulli equation to a linear differential equation
For example, in the case , making the substitution in the differential equation produces the equation , which is a linear differential equation.
Let and
be a solution of the linear differential equation
Then we have that is a solution of
And for every such differential equation, for all we have as solution for .
Consider the Bernoulli equation
(in this case, more specifically a Riccati equation).
The constant function is a solution.
Division by yields
Changing variables gives the equations
which can be solved using the integrating factor
Multiplying by ,
The left side can be represented as the derivative of by reversing the product rule.
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