Symmetry analysis of a class of autonomous even-order ordinary differential equations

Abstract: A class of autonomous, even-order ordinary differential equations is discussed from the point of view of Lie symmetries. It is shown that for a certain power nonlinearity, the Noether symmetry group coincides with the Lie point symmetry group. First integrals are established and exact solutions are found. Furthermore, this paper complements, for the one-dimensional case, some results in the literature of Lie group analysis of poliharmonic equations and Noether symmetries obtained in the last twenty years. In particular, it is shown that the exceptional negative power discovered in [A. H. Bokhari, F. M. Mahomed and F. D. Zaman, Symmetries and integrability of a fourth-order Euler-Bernoulli beam equation, J. Math. Phys., vol. 51, 053517, (2010)] is a member of an one-parameter family of exceptional powers in which the Lie symmetry group coincides with the Noether symmetry group.