Copyright © 2012 Ji-Huan He. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper is an elementary introduction to some new asymptotic methods for the search for the solitary solutions of nonlinear differential equations, nonlinear differential-difference equations, and nonlinear fractional differential equations. Particular attention is paid throughout the paper to giving an intuitive grasp for the variational approach, the Hamiltonian approach, the variational iteration method, the homotopy perturbation method, the parameter-expansion method, the Yang-Laplace transform, the Yang-Fourier transform, and ancient Chinese mathematics. Hamilton principle and variational principles are also emphasized. The reviewed asymptotic methods are easy to be followed for various applications. Some ideas on this paper are first appeared.