A Hermite spectral method for the computation of homoclinic orbits and associated functionals

We present a spectral method for the computation of homoclinic orbits in ordinary differential equations. The method is based on Hermite–Fourier expansions of the complete homoclinic solution and exhibits exponential convergence. In addition, our method can be used to approximate nonlinear functionals which depend on the complete homoclinic solution. This is demonstrated using examples from phase separation dynamics and metastability.