Control of error in the homotopy analysis of semi‐linear elliptic boundary value problems

In the present paper, we have considered three methods with which to control the error in the homotopy analysis of elliptic differential equations and related boundary value problems, namely, control of residual errors, minimization of error functionals, and optimal homotopy selection through appropriate choice of auxiliary function H(x). After outlining the methods in general, we consider three applications. First, we apply the method of minimized residual error in order to determine optimal values of the convergence control parameter to obtain solutions exhibiting central symmetry for the Yamabe equation in three or more spatial dimensions. Secondly, we apply the method of minimizing error functionals in order to obtain optimal values of the convergnce control parameter for the homotopy analysis solutions to the Brinkman–Forchheimer equation. Finally, we carefully selected the auxiliary function H(x) in order to obtain an optimal homotopy solution for Liouville’s equation.