In this paper, an approach based on matrix polynomials is introduced for solving linear systems of partial differential equations. The main feature of the proposed method is the computation of the Smith canonical form of the assigned matrix polynomial to the linear system of PDEs, which leads to a reduced system. It will be shown that the reduced one is an independent system of PDEs having only one unknown in each equation. A comparison of the results for several test problems reveals that the method...

The question how many real analytic affine connections exist locally on a smooth manifold $M$ of dimension $n$ is studied. The families of general affine connections with torsion and with skew-symmetric Ricci tensor, or symmetric Ricci tensor, respectively, are described in terms of the number of arbitrary functions of $n$ variables.

The question how many real analytic equiaffine connections with arbitrary torsion exist locally on a smooth manifold $M$ of dimension $n$ is studied. The families of general equiaffine connections and with skew-symmetric Ricci tensor, or with symmetric Ricci tensor, respectively, are described in terms of the number of arbitrary functions of $n$ variables.