Phase portraits of random planar homogeneous vector fields

Abstract

We study the phase portraits with positive probability of random planar homogeneous vector fields of degree n. In particular, for n=1,2,3, we give a complete solution of the problem and, moreover, either we give the exact value of each probability or we estimate it by using the Monte Carlo method. It is remarkable that all but two of these phase portraits are characterized by their index at the origin and by their number of invariant straight lines through it.