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A Brief Introduction to the Adomian Decomposition Method, with Applications in Astronomy and Astrophysics

The Adomian Decomposition Method (ADM) is a very effective approach for solving broad classes of nonlinear partial and ordinary differential equations, with important applications in different fields of applied mathematics, engineering, physics and biology. It is the goal of the present paper to provide a clear and pedagogical introduction to the Adomian Decomposition Method and to some of its applications. In particular, we focus our attention to a number of standard first-order ordinary differential equations (the linear, Bernoulli, Riccati, and Abel) with arbitrary coefficients, and present in detail the Adomian method for obtaining their solutions. In each case we compare the Adomian solution with the exact solution of some particular differential equations, and we show their complete equivalence. The second order and the fifth order ordinary differential equations are also considered. An important extension of the standard ADM, the Laplace-Adomian Decomposition Method is also introduced through the investigation of the solutions of a specific second order nonlinear differential equation. We also present the applications of the method to the Fisher-Kolmogorov second order partial nonlinear differential equation, which plays an important role in the description of many physical processes, as well as three important applications in astronomy and astrophysics, related to the determination of the solutions of the Kepler equation, of the Lane-Emden equation, and of the general relativistic equation describing the motion of massive particles in the spherically symmetric and static Schwarzschild geometry.