High order analysis of the limit cycle of the van der Pol oscillator

Abstract

We have applied the Lindstedt-Poincaré method to study the limit cycle of the van der Pol oscillator, obtaining the numerical coefficients of the series for the period and for the amplitude to order $859$. Hermite-Padé approximants have been used to extract the location of the branch cut of the series with unprecendented accuracy ($100$ digits). Both series have then been resummed using an approach based on Padé approximants, where the exact asymptotic behaviors of the period and the amplitude are taken into account. Our results improve drastically all previous results obtained on this subject.