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We study a precise class of dynamical systems that we call solvable ordinary differential equations. We prove that analog systems mathematically ruled by solvable ordinary differential equations can be used for transfinite computation, solving tasks such as the halting problem for Turing machines and any Turing jump of the halting problem in the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. We prove that the computational power of such analog systems is exactly the one of transfinite computations of the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. It has been proved recently that polynomial ordinary differential equations correspond unexpectedly naturally to Turing machines. Our results show that the more general exhibited class of solvable ordinary differential equations corresponds, even unexpectedly, naturally to transfinite computations. From a wide philosophical point of view, our results contribute to state that the question of whether such analog systems can be used to solve untractable problems (both for complexity for polynomial systems and for computability for solvable systems) is provably related to the question of the relations between mathematical models, models of physics and our real world. More technically, we study a precise class of dynamical systems: bounded initial value problems involving ordinary differential equations with a unique solution. We show that the solution of these systems can still be obtained analytically even in the presence of discontinuous dynamics once we carefully select the conditions that describe how discontinuities are distributed in the domain. We call the class of right-hand terms respecting these natural and simple conditions the class of solvable ordinary differential equations. We prove that there is a method for obtaining the solution of such systems based on transfinite recursion and taking at most a countable number of steps. We explain the relevance of these systems by providing several natural examples and showcasing the fact that these soluti

We prove that functions over the reals computable in polynomial time can be characterised using discrete ordinary differential equations (ODE), also known as finite differences. We also provide a characterisation of functions computable in polynomial space over the reals. In particular, this covers space complexity, while existing characterisations were only able to cover time complexity, and were restricted to functions over the integers, and we prove that no artificial sign or test function is needed even for time complexity. At a technical level, this is obtained by proving that Turing machines can be simulated with analytic discrete ordinary differential equations. We believe this result opens the way to many applications, as it opens the possibility of programming with ODEs, with an underlying well-understood time and space complexity.

Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) appear to be a universally adopted and very natural way for expressing properties for continuous time dynamical systems. They are intensively used, in particular in applied sciences. There exists an abundant literature about the hardness of solving ODEs with numerical methods. We adopt a dual view: we consider ODEs as a way to program or to describe our mathematical/computer science world. We survey several results considering ODEs under this computational perspective, with a computability and complexity theory point of view. In particular, we provide various reasons why polynomial ODEs should be considered as the continuous time analog of Turing machines for continuous-time computations, or should be used as a way to talk about mathematical logic. This has already applications in various fields: determining whether analog models of computation can compute faster than classical digital models of computation; solving complexity issues for computations with biochemical reactions in bioinformatics; machine independent characterizations of various computability and complexity classes such as PTIME or NPTIME, or proof of the existence of a universal polynomial ordinary differential equation whose solutions can approximate any continuous function if provided with a suitable well-chosen initial condition.

This paper studies the expressive and computational power of discrete Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). It presents a new framework using discrete ODEs as a central tool for computation and algorithm design. We present the general theory of discrete ODEs for computation theory, we illustrate this with various examples of algorithms, and we provide several implicit characterizations of complexity and computability classes. The proposed framework presents an original point of view on complexity and computation classes. It unifies several constructions that have been proposed for characterizing these classes including classical approaches in implicit complexity using restricted recursion schemes, as well as recent characterizations of computability and complexity by classes of continuous ordinary differential equations. It also helps understanding the relationships between analog computations and classical discrete models of computation theory. At a more technical point of view, this paper points out the fundamental role of linear (discrete) ordinary differential equations and classical ODE tools such as changes of variables to capture computability and complexity measures, or as a tool for programming many algorithms.

An astonishing fact was established by Lee A. Rubel (1981): there exists a fixed non-trivial fourth-order polynomial differential algebraic equation (DAE) such that for any positive continuous function phi on the reals, and for any positive continuous function epsilon(t), it has a C^infinity solution with | y(t) - phi(t) | < epsilon(t) for all t. Lee A. Rubel provided an explicit example of such a polynomial DAE. Other examples of universal DAE have later been proposed by other authors. However, while these results may seem very surprising, their proofs are quite simple and are frustrating for a computability theorist, or for people interested in modeling systems in experimental sciences. First, the involved notions of universality is far from usual notions of universality in computability theory. In particular, the proofs heavily rely on the fact that constructed DAE does not have unique solutions for a given initial data. This is very different from usual notions of universality where one would expect that there is clear unambiguous notion of evolution for a given initial data, for example as in computability theory. Second, the proofs usually rely on solutions that are piecewise defined. Hence they cannot be analytic, while analycity is often a key expected property in experimental sciences. Third, the proofs of these results can be interpreted more as the fact that (fourth-order) polynomial algebraic differential equations is a too loose a model compared to classical ordinary differential equations. In particular, one may challenge whether the result is really a universality result. The question whether one can require the solution that approximates phi to be the unique solution for a given initial data is a well known open problem [Rubel 1981, page 2], [Boshernitzan 1986, Conjecture 6.2]. In this article, we solve it and show that Rubel's statement holds for polynomial ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and since polynomial ODEs have a unique solution give

The outcomes of this paper are twofold. Implicit complexity. We provide an implicit characterization of polynomial time computation in terms of ordinary differential equations: we characterize the class P of languages computable in polynomial time in terms of differential equations with polynomial right-hand side. This result gives a purely continuous (time and space) elegant and simple characterization of P. We believe it is the first time such classes are characterized using only ordinary differential equations. Our characterization extends to functions computable in polynomial time over the reals in the sense of computable analysis. Our results may provide a new perspective on classical complexity, by giving a way to define complexity classes, like P, in a very simple way, without any reference to a notion of (discrete) machine. This may also provide ways to state classical questions about computational complexity via ordinary differential equations. Continuous-Time Models of Computation. Our results can also be interpreted in terms of analog computers or analog model of computation: As a side effect, we get that the 1941 General Purpose Analog Computer (GPAC) of Claude Shannon is provably equivalent to Turing machines both at the computability and complexity level, a fact that has never been established before. This result provides arguments in favour of a generalised form of the Church-Turing Hypothesis, which states that any physically realistic (macroscopic) computer is equivalent to Turing machines both at a computability and at a computational complexity level.